Chapter 10 - MARGARET SPEAKS
Margaret read the message while I stood behind her chair.
Then she set the phone down.
“I want a meeting.”
“With Vanessa?”
“With both of them. At Helen’s office.”
I started to object.
She raised her good hand.
“Thomas, I need you to let me finish a sentence before you decide whether I can survive it.”
I stopped.
She had never said anything like that to me.
And she was right.
For weeks, I had been answering doors, taking calls, and standing in front of her. Some of that was necessary.
Some of it was easier than admitting she could choose things I couldn’t control.
“What do you need from me?” I asked.
“Sit beside me.”
The meeting happened three days later.
Helen attended. Daniel brought his own attorney. Vanessa arrived with a separate lawyer and no smile.
Margaret wore a simple green blouse.
Her mother’s pearl bracelet rested above the wrist brace.
She placed Vanessa’s printed message on the table.
“I want you to stop contacting me directly.”
Vanessa looked at her lawyer.
Margaret continued.
“I did not authorize any guarantee. I did not give anyone permission to use my name. And I did not fall by accident.”
Daniel stared at his hands.
“Mom, we know you got hurt.”
“No. You know I was hurt enough to become inconvenient.”
He looked up.
She held his gaze.
“I want you to hear what you said.”
Helen had already cleared the use of the short recording with the attorneys.
She played it.
Now maybe she’ll stop trying to be in every picture.
Daniel’s face changed.
Vanessa shifted in her chair.
“That was taken out of context,” she said.
Margaret turned toward her.
“Then give me the context that makes it kind.”
Silence.
Margaret reached into her purse and removed the letter intended to accompany the house keys.
She read only one line.
“May this be a home where kindness always comes first.”
Then she folded it.
“There will be no gift.”
Daniel’s eyes filled.
For the first time, I couldn’t tell whether it was because of the house.
Margaret pushed herself up carefully.
“I loved you before you had anything,” she told him. “You treated me like I mattered less because you thought you were getting more.”
At the door, Daniel said, “Mom, wait.”
She paused.
He looked at Vanessa.
Then at his attorney.
May you like
“There are emails,” he said.
“Richard told us to delete them.”
