The only question that matters to them is whether you will continue obeying.
Nearly forty minutes passed.
Claire was washing dishes when she heard voices near the fence.
The window of the summer kitchen looked out toward the currant bushes. Martha’s property began just beyond them.
“…a one-bedroom place, can you imagine it, Martha? The three of them will be packed in there like sardines,” Margaret complained. “She filled his head with nonsense. He would never have thought of this himself.”
“Margaret, you’ve been telling them for years that the apartment would go to Daniel,” the neighbor said calmly. “They planned their lives around that.”
“People say all kinds of things. Rachel is closer to me than they are. She comes every Sunday. Sometimes she brings a cake, sometimes she checks my blood pressure. These two live right beside me, and I never hear a kind word.”
“So you really transferred the apartment to Rachel? Like you said you were going to last fall?”
“I did. I signed the deed over in November. I didn’t tell anyone. And you keep quiet. It’s my property. I’ll give it to whoever I want.”
The plate slipped from Claire’s hands.
It landed softly in the basin.
It did not break.
November.
Last November.
Daniel had worked weekends because Margaret had said the front door needed replacing.
“I’m doing this for you,” she had told them. “You need something safer.”
Then December.
January.
February.
The envelope behind the china set.
The squared notebook.
“You’re investing in your own future.”
Claire turned.
Daniel stood in the doorway, holding a watering can.
He had heard everything.
His face had gone white.
Claire dried her hands on a towel and walked outside.
Daniel followed.
“Good afternoon, Martha,” Claire said as she stepped from behind the currant bushes.
The neighbor flushed at once.
She adjusted her scarf.
“Oh, Claire… I only came over for marigold seeds.”
“It’s all right. You’ve actually helped us.”
Claire looked at her mother-in-law.
“Margaret, did I understand correctly? For five years, we gave you money to renovate an apartment that has belonged to Rachel since November?”
Margaret looked startled.
Only for a second.
“Who gave you permission to listen? It’s my apartment, and I decide who inherits it. I tolerated you for five years and gave you a roof over your heads.”
Daniel slowly placed the watering can on the ground.
Years later, Claire would remember that moment more clearly than any other.
That was when she stopped seeing him as his mother’s son.
For the first time, he looked like a grown man.
Exhausted.
And deeply disappointed.
“Mom,” Daniel said. “Tell me yourself. Did you really give the apartment to Rachel?”
“Yes, I did! She’s practically a daughter to me. At least she calls and asks how I am.”
“I call too, Mom. I also live in the same apartment and ask you every morning how you slept.”
“That’s not the same!”
“All right. It isn’t.”
He fell silent.
Then he asked:
“Explain one thing to me. Why did you take our money every month? You told us we were investing in our future. Claire and I gave up everything. We bought Lily’s winter boots on sale because we had to put the money into the envelope.”
“I spent it on you! Food, electricity, household expenses!”
“We bought our own food. We paid the utility bills ourselves. I have every receipt on my phone.”
He looked at his mother.
“So you were simply charging us for being your family?”
“Don’t you dare speak to me that way! I raised you alone while your father worked away from home!”
Claire took her husband’s arm.
His fingers were shaking.
Oddly, she no longer felt angry.
Only relieved.
It was as if someone had finally lifted from her shoulders a heavy bag she had carried so long that she had forgotten its weight.
“You know, Margaret,” Claire said quietly, “you’ve done us a great favor today.”
Her mother-in-law stared at her suspiciously.
“What more could I possibly have done?”
“For five years, we felt guilty about everything. A cup placed on the wrong shelf. A toy left on the carpet. Wanting something for ourselves. Feeling as if we were ungrateful simply because we needed our own life.”
Claire held her gaze.
“That guilt is gone now.”
Margaret said nothing.
“We don’t owe you anything,” Claire continued. “And you don’t owe us anything. Maybe one day we can try to be a family without keeping score. If you ever want that.”
Margaret covered her face with both hands.
“Get out! Both of you! I never want to see you again!”
Claire nodded.
“We’ll leave. Take care of yourself.”
They packed in ten minutes.
George brought Lily back from Martha’s yard and helped buckle her into the child’s seat.
He struggled with the straps, getting the clasps tangled twice.
Then he opened the trunk of his old car and pulled out a large bag of apples and a three-quart jar of honey.
“Take these,” he said, looking toward the river instead of at them. “And don’t hold on to your anger. She spent her whole life afraid of being abandoned. She was so frightened of it that she pushed everyone away first.”