Chapter 6: What Mom Said in the Kitchen
Dererick took his laptop from his bag in the hallway — he'd brought it in from the car when he arrived, as he always did, in case he needed to work after dinner — and set up at the dining room table to draft what he called a preliminary fraud disclosure request.
Lauren sat with him, reading over his shoulder, asking quiet questions I couldn't entirely hear from where I was standing in the doorway.
Aunt Patricia excused herself with a murmur about checking on Tyler and went upstairs.
I doubted she actually knocked on his door, but I appreciated her removal from the room.
Dad sat in the armchair in the living room.
Not his usual chair — the good one by the window where he read — but the smaller one near the door, like he wasn't sure he was allowed to get comfortable.
He hadn't spoken since his last sentence at the table.
Mom was in the kitchen.
I found her at the sink, running water over a stack of dishes she hadn't started washing.
Just running the water.
Staring at the drain.
I turned the tap off.
She didn't jump.
She just stood there with her hands in the empty basin.
"How long did you know?" I asked.
She was quiet for a moment.
"About Carol specifically, or about the money?"
"Either.
Both."
She reached for a dish towel and dried her hands slowly, one finger at a time.
"Your father met Carol two years before the refinance.
She was introduced through the investment group.
When things started going wrong with the account, she offered to help restructure.
She said she had connections.
Ways to manage debt across multiple instruments without it appearing on the main records."
"And that didn't worry you?"
"I was worried about losing the house." Her voice was level.
Not defensive.
Just flat, the way exhaustion makes voices flat when it's been going on long enough.
"She said she could make the numbers manageable.
And for a while, they were."
"While she was taking a cut."
"We didn't know the full amount at first.
By the time we understood what she was taking, we were too deep into the arrangement to — it was complicated, Jenna."
"You keep saying that."
She looked at me.
"Because it was."
"I know it was complicated," I said.
"I'm not asking about Carol right now.
I'm asking about Lauren and me." I paused.
"You called me eighteen months ago.
You were crying.
You told me about the refinance, the payment jump, the exact number you needed."
She looked back at the empty sink.
"You practiced that," I said.
She didn't deny it.
"And then last week you called Lauren about a pipe."
"Lauren has more than we do.
It seemed—"
"Mom." I waited until she looked at me again.
"You set Lauren up to attack me tonight so we wouldn't talk to each other.
So I would leave angry and she would leave feeling righteous and neither of us would ever sit down and compare our bank statements."
Her jaw moved slightly.
"It wasn't that calculated."
"Wasn't it?"
She put the dish towel down on the counter.
Folded it neatly, even now.
"I told Lauren you'd been distant.
That you hadn't been showing up.
I may have — I emphasized certain things."
"You told her I didn't contribute.
And she believed you because she had no reason not to."
"Lauren has always been—"
"Loyal to you," I finished.
"Yes.
I know.
That's why it worked."
The refrigerator hummed.
Outside the kitchen window, the rain had gotten heavier.
I could see it sliding down the glass in uneven lines.
"I was going to tell you eventually," she said.
"When things stabilized."
"When would that have been?"
She didn't answer.
"Mom." I leaned against the counter across from her.
"I'm not asking because I want an apology right now.
I'm asking because I need to understand something.
All those years — the dinners, the comparisons, the way Lauren was held up and I was found wanting — was any of that real?
Or was it always just a way to manage us?"
Her expression shifted.
It cracked, slightly, at the edges.
Not a dramatic crack.
Just the small movement of a face that has been held in a fixed position for a very long time.
"You were always harder to manage," she said quietly.
"Lauren wanted to please us.
You just — you went your own way.
You didn't need us to tell you who you were.
That was difficult for me sometimes."
"So you found ways to remind me."
She was quiet.
"And when you needed something from me," I said, "you knew exactly how to reach me.
Because I would never let the family lose the house.
Even if the family spent every dinner telling me I was nothing."
She pressed her lips together.
Her eyes were wet, but she wasn't crying.
My mother never cried in front of people.
She cried privately and then appeared with a soft expression and let other people feel guilty for whatever they imagined she had suffered alone.
I knew that now with a precision I hadn't had before tonight.
"I think Dererick is going to find out everything," I said.
"About Carol, about the accounts, about all of it.
And I think you need to decide tonight whether you're going to cooperate or whether you're going to keep managing."
She looked at the folded dish towel.
"Because Lauren is not going to let this go," I said.
"She's angry in a way she hasn't been before.
And Dererick is — well.
He's good at his job."
A long silence.
"And you?" she asked.
"What do you want, Jenna?"
I picked up my bag from where I'd set it on the kitchen chair when I came in.
I thought about the question.
I thought about eighteen months of transfers and all the dinners before that and the particular way my mother's face arranged itself when she looked at Lauren versus when she looked at me.
"I want it to stop," I said.
"All of it.
The money and the other thing too."
She knew what the other thing was.
I left her in the kitchen with the folded dish towel and the dark window and went back to the dining room, where Dererick had found something in the account records that had made Lauren cover her mouth with one hand.
May you like
"Jenna," Lauren said when I walked in.
"Come look at this."
