“You told me you wanted your children to learn to swim there.”
“I did. I do.”
Vanessa gave a short laugh.
“Daniel, stop.”
He closed his eyes.
I remembered him sitting at my kitchen table three weeks earlier, turning the salt shaker between his hands. I had asked whether keeping the cottage would be too expensive. He had looked straight at me and said some things were worth keeping.
“What else?”
His answer barely reached me.
“That you wouldn’t need to know until after the wedding.”
A gust lifted the edge of Vanessa’s veil. She caught it impatiently.
“We were going to buy something practical,” she said. “Near our jobs. You would still have somewhere to visit.”
“Visit.”
The word felt unfamiliar in my mouth.
“You have your own house, Margaret.”
Daniel finally looked up.
“I thought if it was already ours, I could explain it without you being able to take it back.”
There it was. Not a misunderstanding. Not something she had made him say.
My son had counted on my love being easier to move than my signature.
“Did you ask me for a gift,” I said, “or did you arrange to get something from me?”
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
Vanessa stepped closer.
“Whatever he said, you signed. Tearing it up doesn’t change that.”
I looked down at the paper. My little act of defiance suddenly seemed terribly small.
“I don’t know what tearing it changes,” I said. “I’m going to ask the person who prepared it.”
For the first time, Vanessa looked away.
I called Ruth Bell, the attorney who had handled my parents’ estate and prepared the wedding gift. My thumb slipped twice before I reached her name.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Margaret? Is everything all right?”
“No.”
I told her where I was, what I had brought, what I had just learned. I did not lower my voice.
