“So you knew there was money to take.”
She lifted her chin.
“You wouldn’t have missed it.”
Carol made a small sound.
There it was, spoken in my dining room as plainly as a request to pass the salt.
Everything they had called concern had ended at that sentence.
I sat down.
For months, I had searched for an explanation that would let me keep loving them without changing anything.
There wasn’t one.
“Who signed my name?”
Vanessa folded her arms.
Richard watched her.
Ethan placed his phone on the table.
“I asked Mom about that after the rejection.”
He opened a message and turned the screen toward me.
His question was simple: Did Grandma actually sign?
Below it, Vanessa had written that she had handled it because I was being difficult, and that he needed to stop making everything a problem.
I read it twice.
Then I looked at her.
“You wrote my name.”
Her gaze went to the screen.
“Give me that phone.”
Ethan picked it up before she could reach it.
“No.”
It was a small word. He sounded frightened saying it.
He said it again anyway.
Vanessa looked at me with an expression I recognized from the instant before the plate had left her hand.
I stood and put the length of the table between us.
“You need to leave.”
She pointed at Ethan.
“Get your things.”
“I’m staying until Grandma has someone here.”
“You don’t get to choose her over me.”
His face crumpled.
“I’m choosing not to lie again.”
Richard reached for his portfolio. Carol stepped away when he touched her elbow.
At the door, Vanessa turned.
“If you take this outside the family, you can’t undo it.”
I looked at the faint stain on the cloth.
“Neither can you.”
