Chapter 7: What Happens Now
Nobody answered Jess's question right away.
Dennis picked up the bank statement from the table and folded it carefully.
He put it in his shirt pocket.
Then he looked at Rachel.
"The three hundred and forty dollars," he said.
"Margaret's tin money.
Can you return it?"
Rachel's hands came down from her face.
"Yes."
"All of it?"
"Yes.
I have it.
Most of it is still—" She stopped.
"Yes.
All of it."
"Then that's the first thing," Dennis said.
He looked at me.
"Claire.
What do you want to happen?"
I had been asking myself the same question since I read the messages on my phone.
I looked at Noah, still standing beside Mom's chair.
I looked at Mom, who was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
Not anger.
Not forgiveness.
Something that was waiting.
"I want Rachel out of my house," I said.
"Tonight."
Rachel nodded.
She didn't argue.
"And I want to know everything about what Gary was planning.
Not tonight.
But soon.
Because if he was running this on us, he's run it on other people.
And I'm not going to let that sit."
"I'll tell you everything I know," Rachel said quietly.
"It's not much.
But I'll tell you."
"Jess," I said.
Jess looked up.
"Stop the recording."
She hesitated.
Then she stopped it.
"What you have on there stays between family," I said.
"For now.
If that changes, I'll let you know."
Jess nodded and put her phone away.
The table began to move again, slowly.
Patricia started collecting plates.
My cousin Marcus, who hadn't said a single word all evening, stood up and began carrying things to the kitchen.
The ordinary machinery of a family dinner reassembling itself around something that had cracked open in the middle of it.
Mom hadn't moved.
I went and sat in the chair next to her.
The one Rachel had been sitting in at the start of the evening.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"I'm old," she said.
"I've seen worse."
"Mom."
"I'm not all right," she said.
"But I will be." She looked at the tulips.
"You remembered the tulips."
"You always liked yellow ones."
"Your father used to bring them home on Fridays.
Just because." She was quiet for a moment.
"I didn't want to tell you about the money.
I kept thinking you had enough to worry about."
"You should have told me."
"I know." She reached over and took my hand.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize to me.
You didn't do anything wrong."
"I let it go on too long."
"You were protecting me."
She squeezed my hand.
"So was Noah."
We both looked at him.
He had finally sat down, across the table, eating a piece of pie that Patricia had quietly placed in front of him.
He caught us looking and gave a small, slightly self-conscious shrug.
"I didn't want Grandma to be sad," he said.
Mom made the sound again.
The one that wasn't words.
But this time it was different.
Upstairs, we heard Rachel's bedroom door open.
Then the sound of drawers.
Then the zip of a bag.
Dennis appeared in the doorway.
"I'll drive her to Patricia's tonight.
She can sort out where she's going from there."
"Thank you," I said.
He nodded and went back into the hallway.
I sat with Mom while the sounds of packing moved through the ceiling above us.
Noah finished his pie.
Patricia brought tea.
The candles burned down to their bases.
An hour later, the front door closed.
The house was quiet in a way it hadn't been in six months.
May you like
But the next morning, I woke up to a voicemail.
It was Gary.
