Chapter 9: What My Mother Wanted
My mother was in the garden when I pulled up — not working, just standing near the roses along the back fence, her hands loose at her sides.
She had planted those roses the year my father died.
I had forgotten they were still there.
I made tea and we sat at the kitchen table, the same way we had sat together a hundred times before the six years and the distance and everything that had grown up in between.
"I need to tell you what Melissa offered," I said.
"And then I need to ask you what you want.
Not what's easiest.
What you actually want."
I told her everything.
The settlement terms.
The repayment.
The apology.
The condition about the APS referral.
My mother listened without interrupting.
When I finished she was quiet for a long moment, both hands around her mug.
"Will Derek go to prison?" she asked.
"Patricia doesn't know yet.
It depends on what they find and what he cooperates with."
"He's still your brother," she said.
"I know."
"He's a weak man," she said.
It came out simply, without anger.
"He always was.
Your father knew it.
I knew it.
I thought Melissa was strong enough to be good for him." She looked at her tea.
"I was wrong about that."
"Mom—"
"I don't want him to go to prison," she said.
"I don't want his children to grow up visiting their father in a cell." She paused.
"But I don't want him to think nothing happened, either.
I don't want him to walk away and believe he can do this to someone else."
"Patricia said if we accept the settlement, she can still require Derek to sign a formal acknowledgment — a legal document admitting the power of attorney was obtained improperly and that the quitclaim deed was prepared without your knowledge or consent.
It goes on record.
It just doesn't go to the DA."
My mother considered that.
"And Melissa's apology," she said.
"You said she agreed."
"She did."
"In writing."
"In writing.
To you.
By name."
She was quiet again.
Outside, a bird landed on the fence near the roses and sat there for a moment before flying off.
"I want the apology," she said.
"I want her to have to write it and mean it and know that I have it." She looked at me.
"And I want Derek to sign whatever Patricia needs him to sign.
So it's real.
So it's on paper somewhere."
"And the settlement otherwise?"
She nodded slowly.
"Let them go.
Let them take their things and go." She set her mug down.
"I just want to sleep in my own bedroom, Claire.
I want to wake up in this house and not be afraid."
I reached across the table and covered her hands with mine.
"You will," I said.
"I promise."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she turned her hands over and held mine back, the way she used to when I was small and had come to her with something I couldn't fix myself.
"You came home," she said.
"I came home."
She nodded, once, as if that settled something she had been carrying for a long time.
Patricia spent the next two weeks negotiating the written terms.
Derek's attorney pushed back on the formal acknowledgment twice.
Patricia held firm both times.
On the fourteenth day, Derek signed it.
Melissa's letter arrived on a Thursday, handwritten on plain paper, three paragraphs.
She did not make excuses.
She named what she had done.
She addressed my mother by name at the top and signed her full name at the bottom.
My mother read it at the kitchen table.
She read it twice.
Then she folded it carefully and put it in the tin box, beneath the photograph of my father.
She didn't say anything for a while.
May you like
Then she said, "All right."
And she got up and started making lunch.
