Chapter 4: What My Mother Already Knew
My mother opened the door before I'd finished knocking.
She looked at my face and stepped back without a word to let us in.
Lily went straight to the couch, pulled a blanket over herself, and stared at the television even though it wasn't on.
My mother put the kettle on.
I sat at the kitchen table and watched her move around the small kitchen — cups, saucers, the tin of tea she'd had for as long as I could remember — and I thought about how many times I had sat at this exact table and had things explained to me that I hadn't wanted to hear.
She set a cup in front of me and sat down across from me.
"Tell me," she said.
I told her.
She didn't interrupt.
She didn't make a sound.
She just sat with both hands wrapped around her cup and listened to all of it — the lease, the seven months, the twenty minutes at the hospital, Lily waiting in the entryway.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.
Then she said: "I knew something was wrong with Kayla."
I looked up.
"At the hospital," she said.
"The way she was with you.
Too attentive.
Too careful.
Like she was performing it."
"You didn't say anything."
"You were in the ICU, Nicole.
What was I going to say?"
She had a point.
I looked down at my tea.
"She brought Lily to see me," I said.
"Twice."
"I know she did."
"I thought that meant something."
My mother was quiet for a moment.
"It probably did mean something.
That doesn't make the rest of it smaller."
I pressed my fingers around the cup.
The warmth helped, slightly.
"Seven months," I said.
"I heard you."
"She was going to be my maid of honor."
"I know."
"She cried when I asked her."
My mother set her cup down.
"Nicole.
Look at me."
I looked at her.
"You did not cause this," she said.
"I need you to hear that clearly.
You did not cause this, and you did not miss something you should have caught.
These are choices they made.
Both of them.
Deliberately.
For seven months."
My throat tightened.
I nodded.
"Now." She folded her hands on the table.
"Practical things.
Do you have a lawyer?"
"I don't need a lawyer, we weren't married —"
"You were engaged.
You've been living together for two years.
Do you have anything in writing about shared finances?
The apartment deposit?
Anything you contributed to that he now controls?"
I hadn't thought about any of that.
"The deposit," I said slowly.
"I paid half.
Six months ago.
When we renewed the lease."
"How much?"
"Eighteen hundred dollars."
She nodded.
"That's recoverable.
Write it down.
Everything you can think of.
Every amount, every date."
From the living room, Lily's voice: "Grandma?
Can I have something to eat?"
"Of course you can, sweetheart." My mother stood, smoothed her hands on her apron, and called back: "Come in here and tell me what you want."
Lily appeared in the doorway.
She looked at me, then at my mother, then back at me.
"Are we staying here tonight?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Okay." She seemed to settle slightly.
"Can I have toast?"
"You can have whatever you like," my mother said, and moved to the bread box.
I watched Lily climb onto the stool at the counter.
She was still wearing her backpack.
She hadn't taken it off since the apartment.
"Lily," I said.
"You can put your bag down."
She looked at the backpack like she'd forgotten it was there.
Then she slid it off her shoulders and set it carefully on the floor beside the stool.
"Mom," she said, not looking up.
"How long did you know?
Before today."
I went still.
"Lily —"
"I heard them once," she said.
"On the phone.
Brandon.
He didn't know I was in the hallway." She picked at the strap of her bag.
"That was a while ago."
My mother's hand stopped on the bread.
"How long ago?" I asked carefully.
Lily looked up at me.
Her eyes were very steady for an eight-year-old.
"Before your accident," she said.
The kitchen went quiet.
Before the accident.
My daughter had been carrying this before a car ran a red light and put me in the ICU.
She had been carrying it through ten days of hospital visits and two cab rides and standing in that entryway waiting for me to come home so she wouldn't have to carry it alone anymore.
"Oh, baby," I said.
She slid off the stool and walked into my arms and I held her as carefully as my ribs would allow, my chin on top of her head, my eyes on the window above the sink.
My mother set the bread down and left the kitchen quietly.
I held my daughter and didn't say anything for a long time.
Outside, it was getting dark.
Somewhere across the city, Brandon and Kayla were in an apartment with their names on a lease, deciding what story to tell.
My phone buzzed on the table.
I didn't reach for it.
It buzzed again.
Then a third time.
Lily pulled back and looked at the phone.
May you like
Then she looked at me.
"It's Aunt Kayla," she said.
