Chapter 3
Just that question, delivered with the indignation of a man who had awakened to discover that the world no longer obeyed him.
Genevieve stood beside him with her arms folded tightly across her chest.
Richard waited a few steps behind them.
I looked at my son.
“Good morning, Benjamin.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like everything is normal.”
I glanced at the clock above the hallway table.
“It’s nearly noon.
I would have thought you knew how mornings worked.”
His jaw tightened.
“Every account we use has been disrupted.
The mortgage payment bounced.
The insurance payment bounced.
The country club called Genevieve.
My business account is frozen.”
“I didn’t freeze your business account,” I replied.
“I canceled the payments I was making toward it.
If the bank has restricted an account in your name, you’ll need to speak to them.”
“You know what I mean!”
“Yes.
I believe I do.”
Genevieve stepped forward.
“This is an extraordinarily vindictive thing to do over a misunderstanding about dinner.”
I looked at her cream-colored coat, the diamond bracelet on her wrist, and the expensive handbag hanging from her arm.
“Was it a misunderstanding?”
She blinked.
“Of course it was.”
“Benjamin told me I wasn’t invited.”
“He was trying to avoid an uncomfortable situation.”
“By telling his seventy-seven-year-old mother that his wife didn’t want her in their home?”
Genevieve’s cheeks flushed.
“I never said I didn’t want you there.”
I turned toward my son.
“Then why did you tell me that?”
Benjamin opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
Richard cleared his throat.
“Perhaps we should discuss this inside.”
I stepped aside.
“Of course.
Come in, Richard.”
My son looked startled that I had addressed the attorney first.
That small reaction told me something important.
Benjamin had not brought Richard here simply to help resolve the family’s financial difficulties.
He had brought him because he expected me to be afraid of whatever the man knew.
I led them into the sitting room.
Thomas’s photograph rested on the mantel, beside the pearl earrings I had removed the previous evening.
I had placed the earrings there without thinking, as though the woman who had worn them to a dinner she was forbidden to attend no longer needed them.
Richard noticed the photograph.
For a moment, his expression softened.
“Eleanor,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
The words surprised me.
“For what?”
He looked at Benjamin, then at Genevieve.