Chapter 5: Come Inside, Your Father Opened the Wine
I called Whitney back within thirty seconds of hanging up.
"Don't respond to that text yet."
"I know."
"And check the nightstand.
Right now, while we're talking."
I heard her moving.
The drawer opening.
"The letter is still here," she said.
"She doesn't know for certain then.
She suspects."
"Or she's testing me."
That was possible too.
My mother had always been good at testing without appearing to.
A casual question that was not casual.
A silence that was not empty.
A text about reading glasses that was not about reading glasses.
"What do I say to her?" Whitney asked.
"Tell her you checked and they're not there."
"But what if she comes back to look herself?"
"Then she comes back to look and finds nothing.
But Whitney — scan that letter first.
Right now.
Email it to yourself and to me before you do anything else."
A pause.
"You think like a lawyer."
"I think like someone who grew up in this family."
I heard her moving to another room.
The sound of a scanner or a phone camera.
The soft chime of an email sending.
My phone buzzed.
The scan arrived.
Two pages.
My mother's handwriting, neat and slanted, the way it had always been on birthday cards and grocery lists and the notes she used to leave in my lunchbox in primary school.
I had not thought about those lunchbox notes in years.
I set my phone face-down on the table.
"Done," Whitney said.
"Good.
Now text her back."
Whitney sent the message.
We stayed on the phone while she did it, and then we waited, and my mother's reply came in four minutes.
Oh, how strange.
I was certain I left them there.
Never mind, I'll check the car.
"She's not going to check the car," Whitney said.
"No."
"She's going to come back."
"Probably."
Whitney exhaled.
"Clara, what do we do?
I mean — what do we actually do?
With the letter.
With all of it."
I had been thinking about that since seven forty-three.
I had been thinking about it while June nursed and while Dara slept on my couch and while the morning light moved across my kitchen floor.
"I think we need to talk to them," I said.
"Together.
In person."
"They'll deny it."
"I know."
"Mom will cry.
Dad will say we're being unfair."
"I know."
"And then what?"
"Then we have the letter."
Silence.
"You want to confront them with it."
"I want them to sit across from us and explain it in their own words.
I want to hear what they say when they can't manage the story from separate rooms."
Whitney was quiet for a long moment.
"When?" she finally asked.
"This weekend.
Before either of us loses our nerve."
"Where?"
I thought about that.
Not my apartment — too small, and I didn't want my mother's presence in the rooms where June slept.
Not Whitney's house — my mother knew every corner of it now, had walked through it the night before like she owned it.
"Neutral," I said.
"Somewhere public enough that no one screams."
"A restaurant."
"Yes."
"They'll think it's a normal family lunch."
"Until it isn't."
Whitney made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Not quite.
"Okay," she said.
"This weekend."
"This weekend."
After we hung up, I sat for a while with my coffee going cold.
Dara appeared in the kitchen doorway, hair flattened on one side, holding June against her shoulder.
"She woke up," Dara said.
"I changed her.
I hope that's okay."
"More than okay."
Dara sat down across from me and settled June against her chest with the ease of someone who had done this ten thousand times.
"You look like you've been thinking hard," Dara said.
"I'm going to confront my parents this weekend."
Dara nodded slowly.
"Do you want company?"
"I think this one has to be family."
"Okay." She looked at June.
"For what it's worth — she slept through the whole diaper change.
Didn't make a sound."
I looked at my daughter.
Four weeks old.
Already better at staying quiet through difficult things than I had ever been.
"She gets that from me," I said.
Dara smiled.
"Maybe she doesn't have to."
I didn't answer.
But I thought about it for the rest of the day.
My mother called that evening at six.
I let it ring.
She called again at six-fifteen.
I let it ring again.
At six-thirty, a text arrived.
Just checking in on you and the baby.
Hope the arm is feeling better.
Call when you can, sweetheart.
Sweetheart.
She had not called me sweetheart since I was small.
She had not used it last night when Dad told her I was in the emergency room.
She had not used it in the text she sent three days after June was born.
May you like
She was using it now.
I put my phone in the kitchen drawer and did not take it out again until morning.
