Chapter 2

2: 2

The local station cut the footage from that day at our door into a "human interest" news story.

"Eighty-Year-Old Mother Weeps for Her Home, Ungrateful Daughter Seizes Demolition Money."

My mother looked at it for one second.

I switched the TV off.

"What do you want to watch that for?"

"Hailey."

She kept her head down. "I've really made a mess of my life."

"When I was a teenager, your grandmother said the family couldn't afford to send two of us to school. It had to go to your uncle."

"At twenty, your grandmother took a two-thousand-dollar bride price from the next town over and married me off."

"Your dad got his year-end bonus at the plant, and your grandmother came over with your uncle."

"They wanted me to hand the money over. I wouldn't, so your grandmother sat down on the living room floor and cried, cried until the middle of the night."

"The neighbors all came to watch. Your dad gave up the money in the end, but I knew it, I'd wronged him."

"After that there was too much of it, and your dad was worn out too."

"I chose to divorce him. I'm the reason this family fell apart."

I sat down beside her and felt how much thinner she'd gotten.

To keep me fed, after the divorce, she'd gone abroad to work in domestic service.

More than ten hours of work a day, all so I'd have a home.

"Mom."

"It's not your fault."

She gave a small laugh.

"Then whose fault is it now?"

The knocking started, angry and hard.

Through the peephole, Duke Summers stood at the door smoking, his mother beside him, my aunt Julia Whitney.

Julia was holding a plastic bag with what looked like some kind of documents inside.

My mother glanced over.

"What are they here for again."

I wouldn't open the door.

"Ignore them."

The words were barely out before the pounding hit again.

Duke's voice went up.

"Cousin, my mom's here with me, open the door already."

I couldn't hold back.

"Stop banging. Say what you came to say."

He gave a laugh.

"I knew you were both cowering in there."

"My girlfriend says her name has to go on it too, or the wedding's off."

"Come to the county recorder's office with us and transfer the title now."

Julia leaned in and called out.

"Hailey, honey, a place like this must run you over a thousand in rent, doesn't it?"

"Your aunt's already lined something up for you. There's a cheap place on the west side of town, four hundred a month."

"You and your mom move over there, and the money you save can go toward your cousin's wedding..."

I had to hand it to them. Shameless to this degree, you could turn it into a web drama and it would blow up.

"No need."

I pushed my mother toward the bedroom.

Not one word was worth wasting on them.

Duke flicked his cigarette butt to the floor, ground it under his shoe, and pounded the door.

"Bella Summers! I know you're in there!"

"Open up! I brought the transfer papers, don't hold up my wedding!"

Julia's voice stoked it higher.

"Sis, you're his aunt. Your nephew's getting married, you can't really refuse to give him so much as a nest, can you?"

"A four-hundred-dollar place is plenty for you. A big place like this, no point keeping it..."

I stood with my back against the door.

"Get out!"

"I've called the cops!"

My mother's eyes were red, the tears held back inside them.

My phone buzzed.

It was my dad.

"Saw the news. Is your mom okay?"

At the top of the message thread I could see "typing," flickering on and on, like he didn't know what to say.

I handed the phone to my mother.

She looked at the screen, her fingers trembling faintly.

At the divorce, my dad had walked out with nothing, hadn't asked for a thing.

She typed a few words, then deleted them.

In the end she sent only three:

"I'm all right."

How could she be all right?

Outside, Duke started kicking the door.

"Mom."

I said it plainly. "Let's go."

"Go? Go where?"

I took the document envelope down from the top of the closet.

Two plane tickets to Cresthaven.

And an employment contract.

An offer from a well-known law firm in Cresthaven.

"When did you..."

My mother stared at the papers, stunned.

"Ever since we came out of the new house, I started getting it ready."

The door shuddered under the blows, and downstairs a neighbor had had enough, shouting "what's all the racket."

I looked at my mother.

"There's nothing here worth holding on to anymore."

"The house, the relatives, that news story, leave it all here."

"We'll go live somewhere else."

The cursing outside got uglier, and Julia started calling us "ungrateful wretch."

My mother walked over and dug an old photo out of the coffee table drawer.

In it was my grandmother as a young woman, holding my mother at two years old, her whole face soft and kind with a smile.

She set the photo down on the coffee table and turned around.

"Let's go."

She took nothing.

Just a small bag with the little savings she'd put by over the years and her ID.

Duke and the rest were finally talked away by building management, after neighbors who'd had enough of them made the call.

Once the stairwell went quiet, I took my mother's hand and we got into a cab.

On the way to the airport, my mother leaned against the window.

"Hailey."

"Am I too much of a coward?"

"No."

I watched the complex gate shrink in the rearview mirror.

"You just endured too much."

She took my hand.

"No more enduring, from now on."