“Speak.”
“What’s going on? Why did you do that with the accounts?”
“What do you think, Amber?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. We’re stranded here.”
I got up from the porch and walked into the kitchen. I needed to be moving for this conversation.
“You know what, Amber? I think you do know. I think you know exactly why I did what I did.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you? You don’t know anything about a conversation at Mr. Henderson’s law office. You don’t know anything about papers to sell the farm. You don’t know anything about plans to take me to a nursing home.”
Total silence. I couldn’t even hear the waves in the background anymore.
“Mother-in-law.”
“Don’t call me mother-in-law. Mothers-in-law are family. And you stopped being my family the day you decided to rob me.”
“It wasn’t robbery. It was for your own good. A woman your age can’t manage such a large property on her own.”
There it was. The truth finally. A woman my age. As if 73 were a disease. As if experience were a disability.
“And who decided that? You, your mother, my own son.”
“We were all worried about you.”
“Lies. You were worried about the money, about the property, about what you could get if I disappeared from the picture.”
I heard her pass the phone to someone else. It was Catherine.
