“Tyler thinks we’re teaching her a lesson about money,” Brooke said. “He’s been saying for a year that she treats him like a kid. He thinks it’s his idea now.” She laughed, low. “He’ll come around when the house closes. Why settle for a hundred and fifty? Kessler says once you’re appointed, all of it goes into a care account. The insurance, the townhouse, whatever she was going to give that school. You release it to us as family distributions.”
“Minus my fee,” Darlene said.
“Minus your fee.”
“And the townhouse?”
“We sell it,” Brooke said. “She doesn’t need two houses. She barely needs one.”
There was a clink of coffee cups.
“By Easter,” Darlene said, “she’ll be in a nice little apartment at Willow Ridge, eating creamed corn at four o’clock, and she’ll never even know what happened.”
“And if she fights it?” Brooke asked.
“With what?” Darlene said. “By Easter, who’s going to believe her?”
I set the box down on the top step, next to the door. Very carefully. So nothing inside would make a sound.
And I walked back down to my car, and I drove home, and I sat in Walt’s recliner in the dark until the furnace kicked on at six. I didn’t cry. I want you to know that.
I had ten days to practice not crying. I got very good at it.
“Aunt Darlene,” Tyler said.
His voice came out strange. Thin. Like he was twelve again.
“Why is your name on this?”
Darlene lowered the phone. She didn’t turn off the recording. I noticed that.
“Ty, honey,” she said. “Give me that. You don’t understand what you’re looking at.”
“I understand what I’m looking at.” He held up the page. “Proposed conservator. Darlene Voss. Petitioners. Darlene Voss. Brooke Pruitt.” He turned to his wife. “Brooke. Why is your name on this?”
Brooke’s new bag slid off her shoulder. It h!t the hardwood floor with a soft, expensive thud.
“It’s a draft,” she said quickly. “It’s nothing. It’s just—it’s paperwork, Ty. It’s just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“In case she—” Brooke looked at me, and for the first time all day, something real flashed across her face. Something cornered. “Look at her, Tyler. She bought a truck. She bought a two-thousand-dollar purse. She’s giving a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to us and God knows how much to a high school. Your dad’s been gone a year and she’s throwing money at everybody like she’s trying to get rid of it. Darlene’s worried about her. I’m worried about her. Somebody has to be the adult.”
“So you wanted to take her house,” Ray said from his chair.
“Nobody’s taking her house!”
“It says the house,” Ray said. “Right there. I can read it from here, Brooke.”
Patty had her hand over her mouth. Caleb was still filming. Nobody told him to stop.
I sat back down in Walt’s recliner, with my handbag at my feet. I picked up my coffee.
It had gone cold, but I drank it anyway, because Ruth had said the calmest woman in Ashworth County, and I meant to be her.
“Darlene,” I said. “Why don’t you tell Tyler what Exhibit F is?”
My sister’s face went the color of the pecan pie crust.
“Jo.”
“Go on. It’s on the list. The very last line. Video documentation of respondent’s emotional instability. To be obtained December twenty-fifth.” I set my cup down. “That’s today. You’ve been holding that phone up since Tyler tapped his glass. How’s it coming?”
Nobody in the room said a word.
“Did you get my good side?” I asked.
Darlene’s hand, holding the phone, started to shake.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “Jo. You don’t understand. You’ve been giving everything away since Walt. You’re not thinking straight. You’re sad and you’re lonely and you’re—”
“I’m what?”
“You’re going to end up with nothing!” Darlene’s voice cracked right down the middle. “You’re going to give it all to strangers and to kids who don’t even call you on your birthday, and then you’re going to be old and alone and broke, and who do you think is going to take care of you then? Me. It’s always going to be me.”
“You,” I said.
“Yes, me!”
“Darlene,” I said, very gently, “I lent you forty thousand dollars eleven years ago. After Gary left. You’ve never paid back a cent, and I’ve never once asked you to.” I let that sit. “Who exactly has been taking care of who?”
Darlene didn’t answer. Patty looked at the floor. Ray looked at Darlene the way you’d look at a dog that just bit a child.
Tyler was still holding the second page. He hadn’t moved since he’d read it.
“There’s a third page, Tyler,” I said.
He looked down. He turned to it slowly. Ruth’s letter.
And behind it, stapled, Dr. Brooks’s report. I watched him read it. I watched him get to the last line.
Full decision-making capacity. Then he looked at the date at the top. December eighteenth.
“A week ago,” he said.
“Yes.”
“You knew.” His voice was very quiet. “You knew about this. Before today.”
“For seventeen days.”
“And you still—” He gestured at the window. At the truck. The bow. “You still bought me that? You still let me stand up there and say—” His face crumpled, just for a second. “Mom. Why would you let me say that? In front of everybody?”
And there it was. The question I’d been waiting seventeen days to answer.
“Because I wanted to see if you would,” I said.
Tyler stared at me.
