Brooke reached for her handbag.
“This is ridiculous. You agreed.”
Dorothy turned back.
“When?”
“Yesterday. You said everything would be ready.”
“I said that after you sent me orders. I should have said no clearly. I’m saying it now.”
Bradley’s thumb hovered above his phone.
Brooke lowered her voice.
“You know she’s been getting confused.”
The cottage became very quiet.
Dorothy watched her son’s face, and something there changed before he spoke: recognition, followed by an expression so stricken that she knew this was not the first time he had heard those words.
“What have you been telling him?” Dorothy asked.
Brooke’s eyes flicked toward Bradley.
“Nothing. I’ve just been worried.”
He opened a conversation on his phone. His hand moved slowly, as though scrolling through something sharp.
“Last week you said Mom had asked us to handle the house arrangements.”
Dorothy felt the key’s teeth press into her palm.
“No.”
“You said she’d forgotten inviting everybody. That she was embarrassed and didn’t want me asking about it.”
Brooke folded her arms.
“I was trying to keep this from becoming a problem.”
Bradley kept reading.
“You wrote, ‘If she protests when we arrive, don’t argue with her. Just let me manage it.’”
Dorothy lowered herself into the nearest chair.
Neither of them moved to help, and she was grateful. She did not want their hands on her while she absorbed what her son had almost been persuaded to believe.
Brooke had not simply counted on her silence.
She had prepared an explanation for her refusal.
Bradley stared at the messages.
“You made it sound as though she wasn’t capable of deciding.”
“I said she was overwhelmed.”
“You said she was forgetting things.”
“People forget things, Bradley.”
Dorothy placed the key flat on the table.
“Look at me.”
Brooke did.
“I found this house. I compared the costs. I read every document before I signed it. You don’t get to make my age into evidence against me because I won’t cook your dinner.”
Tires sounded on the gravel outside.
Brooke looked relieved for half a second. Guests meant witnesses, and witnesses meant Dorothy might prefer good manners to a confrontation.
A man and woman approached the open door carrying a bottle in a silver gift bag.
“Are we early?” the woman asked.
