“Get upstairs, old woman. My parents need your room.”
Betty, a seventy-eight-year-old Black American widow, stood beside the rocking chair where she’d comforted her son through childhood nightmares.
“Jake?”
His silence answered.
Susan snatched Betty’s wedding photograph. “You don’t need this downstairs anymore.”
“The house sold this morning,” Betty said.
“You can’t sell our home.”
“Mine. I bought it cleaning houses for people who spoke to me like you.”
Jake whispered, “Where will we live?”
“I paid your deposit somewhere safe.”
“And you?”
“Would you have asked if I hadn’t sold it?”
Jake’s mouth stayed open. Beside him, Susan turned the wedding photograph facedown against her leg, and Betty watched the corner of its frame press into the fabric of her trousers.
“Give that back.”
Susan glanced at the photograph as though she had forgotten taking it.
“We need to talk about what you’ve done.”
“The picture first.”
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Somewhere upstairs, a pipe knocked against the wall. Betty held out her hand until Susan finally placed the frame in it.
Betty wiped a thumb across the glass. Her husband’s face emerged from beneath a fingerprint. He had been twenty-six in that photograph, wearing a rented suit with sleeves slightly too short. She had loved those exposed wrists.
Jake reached toward her elbow.
She stepped aside.
“Don’t help me stand when you wouldn’t help me stay.”
His hand dropped.
Susan drew a breath through her nose. “My parents arrive tomorrow. Their lease is ending. You knew that.”
“I knew they were visiting.”
“We discussed their staying.”
“You discussed it with Jake. I was washing your plates.”
Susan looked at her husband, waiting for him to correct the account. He studied a scratch in the floor between his shoes.
Betty set the photograph on the mantel, beyond Susan’s reach.
“The buyers take possession in thirty days. You have time to move. The apartment I found has two bedrooms, an elevator, and a bathroom your father can use.”
“You found us an apartment?” Jake asked.
“I paid a holding deposit. Whether you sign the lease is your decision.”
Susan gave a short, incredulous laugh.
“An apartment. Four adults in an apartment, while you walk away with the money.”
“Yes,” Betty said. “The money from my house.”
For a moment, Susan seemed unable to find a sentence large enough for her anger. Then she turned toward Jake.
“Tell her.”
Betty watched her son’s shoulders draw inward.
“Tell me what?”
He rubbed his palms against his trousers.
