“Something’s wrong with you,” she said finally, voice low now, dangerous. “You’ve changed.”
That almost made me smile.
“No,” I said. “I’m paying attention.”
She turned and walked back to her car without another word. Her heels clicked across the porch, then the steps, then the driveway. She never looked back. I stood there until the sedan disappeared around the corner.
When I went inside, there was a voicemail waiting from Colette.
“You need to stop whatever little episode this is,” she said, sounding annoyed more than angry. “Mom’s trying to help you, and you’re making everything harder because you’re lonely.”
Lonely.
The word landed, but differently than she intended. Because yes, I was alone in my house. Alone in the way single adults often are when dishes sit drying on the rack and no one asks how your day was unless they mean it. But loneliness and emptiness are not the same thing. My life had friends in it. Books. Work I was good at. A home that held my shape. What she meant was unchosen. Unvalidated. Unclaimed by a man or a child. In my family’s language, those counted as the same.
I saved the voicemail.
In early June, Claudette called with the first serious update. The court had accepted the petition. A hearing date was likely by August. More importantly, initial tracing of the account showed clear movement of funds from the estate into the joint account and then outward into separate uses: transfers to Colette, payments connected to my parents’ mortgage, a car loan in my father’s name.
Everybody had eaten.
I sat at my kitchen table holding the phone while sun flashed off the glass of the patio door. Dust motes moved in the light like tiny living things.
“So my father knew,” I said.
“It appears he benefited,” Claudette replied carefully. “Knowledge may be inferred. We need more documentation before I make stronger claims.”
Benefited. Another lawyer word. It sounded so mild for something that made my throat burn.
After the call I pulled out the old family photo albums from my hall closet. Not because I wanted comfort. Because I wanted to look at the evidence of us. The years. The patterns. My mother’s hand always resting a little more proudly on Colette’s shoulder. My father smiling broader in pictures where Colette held a report card or a baby. Me on the edges, competent and smiling, the kind of child adults trust to stand still.
