Chapter 9: What Wendy Chose
Carol's letter arrived at the guest cottage by hand delivery at four o'clock that afternoon.
I know because I watched from the upstairs window.
The courier knocked.
Wendy answered.
She took the envelope, looked at the return address, and her face did something I had not seen it do before.
It went uncertain.
Not angry.
Not defiant.
Uncertain.
She closed the door.
I went back to my desk.
At six o'clock, she knocked on the door of the main house.
Jessi answered.
I came to stand in the hallway.
Wendy was still holding the letter.
She had not opened it.
"I'd like to speak to both of you," she said.
"Come in," Jessi said.
We sat in the living room.
Wendy on one side.
Jessi and I on the other.
The letter on the coffee table between us, still sealed.
"I want to say something before I read that," Wendy said.
"Go ahead," I said.
She looked at her daughter.
"I have spent your entire life believing that I knew better than you what you needed.
I have told myself that was love." She stopped.
Her hands were in her lap, very still.
"I think it was love.
I also think it was something else.
Something I don't have a clean word for." She looked at the letter.
"When Daniel came back, I was terrified.
Not for you.
For me.
For what it meant about the years I had managed.
The decisions I had made." She paused.
"If he was alive, and if you told Nathan, then everything I had done — the insurance, the secrecy, the control — would be examined.
And I knew it wouldn't look the way I had told myself it looked."
Jessi was very still beside me.
"I used Fiona," Wendy said.
"I know that.
I have known it since the morning she came home and wouldn't eat her breakfast." Her voice dropped.
"I told myself it was temporary.
That it would be over soon.
That she was resilient." She looked at Jessi.
"She is resilient.
But that's not a reason to test it."
The room was quiet.
"What are you asking for, Wendy?" I said.
She looked at me directly.
"I'm not asking for anything.
I'm telling you that I will move out.
I'll go to my sister's in Hartford.
I'll give you the documentation of the insurance claim — all of it, including my own records." She picked up the letter and set it back down without opening it.
"I am not going to fight you.
I don't have the right to."
Jessi made a sound.
Small.
Involuntary.
"Mom—"
"Let me finish." Wendy's voice was steady now.
"I want to remain in Fiona's life.
I understand if that's not possible immediately.
I understand if it takes time." She looked at her hands.
"I am asking — not demanding — for the chance to be her grandmother without the rest of it.
Without the managing.
Without the fear." She looked up.
"I don't know if I know how to do that yet.
But I would like to try."
Jessi stood up.
She crossed the room and sat beside her mother.
She didn't say anything.
She just sat there.
Wendy looked at her daughter for a long moment.
Then she put her arm around her.
Jessi leaned into her shoulder the way a much younger person would.
I looked at the two of them.
Then I picked up the letter from the coffee table and held it out to Wendy.
"Open it," I said.
"Read it.
Then give it to Carol Reyes with everything you have.
All of it.
The records, the account statements, whatever documents you kept."
Wendy took the letter.
"And the forty thousand dollars," I said.
"The half you kept.
It goes back to Daniel.
Through Carol.
Cleanly."
Wendy's jaw tightened for just a moment.
Then it released.
"Yes," she said.
"When that's done," I said, "we talk about what your relationship with Fiona looks like going forward.
Not before."
Wendy nodded.
I left them in the living room.
I went to the kitchen and made three cups of tea without thinking about it.
Then I carried them back.
Wendy looked at the cup I placed in front of her.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me yet," I said.
"There's still a lot to sort out."
May you like
But I sat down.
And we drank the tea.
