Chapter 2 - The Severed Cord
"You think this is funny," I said, stepping toward Patrice until I was close enough to see the dry powder caking in the creases around her mouth.
"Nora, please," my mother pleaded, taking half a step forward from the dining table. "Not in front of guests. Let's just... let's put the gift away."
"No, Mom," I said, not looking at her. My gaze remained locked on my aunt. "We aren't putting it away. We aren't laughing it off. We aren't pretending she’s just an eccentric old woman who doesn't know any better. She knows exactly what she’s doing."
Patrice rolled her eyes, folding the onesie with elaborate, casual indifference and dropping it back onto the rug. "If you have nothing to hide, sweetheart, why are you so upset? A secure woman would have laughed. A secure woman would know her husband wouldn't let a scrap of cotton drive him into the bedroom like a frightened rabbit."
She smoothed the lapels of her magenta jacket, looking around the room as if inviting the court to admire her rhetoric.
"Then maybe your marriage wasn't very strong to begin with," Patrice added softly.
A sharp gasp escaped my mother.
"You've spent twelve months doing this," I said, my voice dropping an octave, steady and cold. "From the moment she was born in Williamson Medical Center, you looked at her hair and you smelled blood in the water. You whispered at Sunday dinners. You dropped hints to Judith. You joked about delivery men and paternity tests until you poisoned my husband's mind so thoroughly that he spends his nights looking up mail-order DNA kits on the internet."
Across the room, Judith shifted uncomfortably in her chair, her teacup rattling against its saucer.
"I didn't make him doubt you, Nora," Patrice sneered, her voice dropping its sugary veneer, revealing the hard, rusted iron beneath. "A man only looks for proof when his own eyes tell him he's being made a fool of. You want to blame me for genetics? You want to blame me because you couldn't keep your own house in order?"
"Do you want to talk about Grandma Evelyn's missing money?"
The sentence did not rise in pitch; it dropped like an anvil through a glass floor.
Patrice’s lips parted.
The color did not merely fade from her face; it evacuated, leaving behind a sallow, greyish hue beneath her expensive foundation. The hand that had been resting on her gold bangles went rigid, the fingers curling into tight, trembling claws.
"What?" she breathed.
"The checks, Patrice," I said, taking another measured step forward. "The ones you signed while Grandma was dying in the hospice wing at Saint Thomas."
The room seemed to shrink.
My father’s coffee cup stopped halfway to his mouth. He looked at me, then at his sister, his brow furrowing in deep, bewildered distress. "Nora? What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about the six months before Grandma Evelyn died," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on Patrice’s widening pupils. "When her arthritis was so severe she couldn't sign her own church pledge card. When the hospice nurses had to feed her broth with a plastic syringe because she couldn't hold a spoon. Yet, during those exact six months, seven personal checks were drawn on her First Tennessee account, made out to cash and to Patrice Weller, bearing a signature that looked like it had been traced by a schoolchild."
"You... you shut your mouth," Patrice hissed, her voice cracking, the polished matriarch completely vanishing behind a feral, cornered mask. "You don't know anything about her affairs! I took care of her! I managed her household while your father was too busy with his shop!"
"I have the copies of the cancelled checks, Patrice," I said quietly. "I have Grandma's medical charts from the palliative care physician documenting the total loss of fine motor skills in both hands dating back to the previous October. And I know exactly how much disappeared from her estate before the probate court ever saw the ledger."
Patrice lunged forward, not to strike me, but to grab her boutique bag from the floor. Her fingers missed the handle on the first attempt, clawing frantically at the cardstock. "You vindictive little liar! You ungrateful, malicious little bitch!"
"Get out," I repeated, pointing toward the open front door where the autumn wind was beginning to blow rain against the screen. "You have had an entire year to stop trying to destroy my family. Your time is up."
She didn't look at my mother. She didn't look at my father. She clutched her bag against her chest like a shield, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps, and scrambled across the hardwood. The screen door slammed shut behind her with a violent wooden crack.
Through the front window, we watched her practically fall down the three brick porch steps, stumble across the flagstones, and wrench open the door of her silver Lexus. The tires spun on the wet asphalt of Carnton Lane, leaving dark streaks of rubber before she disappeared around the bend.
Inside, the silence returned, heavier and darker than before.
My father slowly stood up from the armchair by the fireplace. His face had taken on the dull, waxy pallor of an old man who had just received a fatal diagnosis. His hands were shaking so violently that he had to set his cup down on the mantelpiece, where it clattered against the brass clock.
"Nora," he said, his voice barely more than a gravelly whisper. "Look at me."
I turned toward him.
"What checks?" he asked. His eyes were wide, watery, and clouded with a sudden, horrifying comprehension. "What money from your grandmother?"
"Fifteen thousand two hundred dollars, Dad," I said, the exact figure having been burned into my memory for over two years. "Drawn in increments of two thousand and twenty-five hundred between November and April."
My father closed his eyes. A low, shuddering groan rattled in his chest, and he leaned his forehead against the brick edge of the chimney.
"Dad?" I asked, stepping toward him, alarmed by the profound, physical collapse in his posture.
May you like
When he opened his eyes, they were hollowed out by a misery so ancient and profound it made my breath hitch.
"That's impossible, Nora," he whispered, staring through me as if looking at a ghost. "That's impossible. Patrice told me... she told me your grandmother gave that fifteen thousand dollars to you. For your down payment on this house."
