“Third,” Daniel continued in the same measured voice, “when Sophie got married, I gave her two hundred thousand dollars. It wasn’t a fortune, but at the time it was nearly everything I had available. In the six years since then, my sister hasn’t helped me once. I never demanded that she do so. I’m simply listing the facts because apparently we’ve decided to discuss fairness.”
“She put all of this in your head!” Margaret burst out. “Before Claire, you were a completely different person!”
“Fourth. After Claire’s grandfather died, her father inherited the family farmhouse. He sold it and gave every penny to his daughter. That allowed us to pay off our mortgage. Later, we sold our two-bedroom apartment and bought this one. So all the serious financial support that helped our family move forward came from Claire’s relatives. From your side, we mostly receive demands. Unfortunately, banks don’t accept demands as a form of payment.”
“And fifth,” Claire added softly, “we’re thinking about having a second child. But before that, we want to take our daughter to the sea, which she has seen only in photographs and in her own drawings. This vacation wasn’t a sudden whim that appeared yesterday. We’ve been waiting six years.”
Margaret drew breath to argue, but Daniel raised one hand and stopped her.
“And one last thing. I’m not abandoning my sister. If she needs help, I can buy groceries, pass along things the children need, or take my nieces and nephew for a weekend now and then. But I will not destroy my own family’s plans to make other people’s lives more convenient. Not for Sophie’s children and not so that you can feel calmer.”
“So now they’re strangers to you,” Margaret whispered. “This is what it has come to.”
“My family is here,” Daniel replied, nodding toward the adjoining room, where Lily’s quick footsteps could be heard. “The rest are still my relatives. Those things are not the same, Mom. There’s a reason different words exist for them.”
At that very moment, Lily entered the room. She held her drawing in front of her as though she were presenting her grandmother with a precious ceremonial gift.
“Grandma, look! This is the sea! Here I am, and Daddy is next to me, and Mommy is here. And this is a dolphin. Though for some reason mine looks a little like a cucumber.”
Margaret lowered her eyes to the drawing but did not take the paper from her granddaughter. She merely moved the child’s hand aside, as though pushing away a curtain that stood in her path, and walked toward the front door.
“Grandma, you haven’t really looked at the dolphin yet.”
The door closed.
Once she reached the landing, Margaret immediately took out her phone and called her daughter. She started talking before she had even taken the first step down the staircase.
“He refused. Absolutely refused.”
“What do you mean, he refused?” Sophie’s voice snapped through the phone. “Did you tell him about the children? Did you explain that I’m alone with them?”
“I told him everything. He stood there and started listing facts one by one. First, second, third…”
“She turned him against us! I knew it from the beginning! He used to be a normal person! Claire controls him completely. She deliberately poisoned him against his own family!”
“Claire was standing beside him. Completely calm, even smiling. Whatever I said, she had an answer ready.”
“I want to go to the sea too!” Sophie nearly screamed. “Why are they allowed to have a vacation while I’m not? They have money, and I know perfectly well that they do! They’re just selfish! They always have been!”
Margaret fell silent for several seconds, staring at a floor number someone had drawn on the wall.
“She said it straight to my face: ‘Why should we give up our plans for your daughter’s children?’”
“And you just swallowed that?”
“I left.”
“Mom!”
Margaret ended the call. She descended the stairs slowly. Inside her, two completely opposite feelings seemed to exist at once. One almost admired her daughter-in-law, who defended what belonged to her with such certainty, as though she had built a tall, solid wall around her family. The other raged because the money was so close, almost within reach, and yet it was still going to be spent on something Margaret did not want.
Meanwhile, Claire placed the suitcase in the middle of the room and opened it wide.
“Lily, bring your swimsuit. And take the swimming ring too.”
“It won’t fit in there!”
“Then it will travel separately. It’ll be treated like a very important passenger.”
Daniel paused in the doorway and watched his wife arrange the clothes in neat stacks.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Me? I’m wonderful. I actually like it when difficult conversations end with me being able to return to packing.”
“Mom probably won’t speak to me for a month now.”
“So we get an ordinary vacation, plus roughly three weeks of complete silence. That’s a very generous gift from this summer.”
Daniel walked over, took the neatly folded towel from her hands, and placed it in the suitcase himself.
“If you think I’m going to spend the vacation feeling guilty about Sophie, I’m not. She has her own life and her own family. I’ll help her when I can and when I believe it’s the right thing to do. But we have another task in front of us now.”
“And what task is that?”
“Our vacation,” Daniel said. “In eight days. Or nine. Apparently, this is a subject over which our family has serious disagreements.”
“Eight!” Lily’s voice rang out from the hallway.
The girl rushed into the room carrying an enormous pink swimming ring.
“The sea! The sea! We’re going to the sea very soon!”
Claire closed the zipper on the first compartment of the suitcase and winked cheerfully at her husband.
“See? You heard her yourself. Fingers never make mistakes.”