“No, let me finish. In all these years, did you ever see me fail? Did a harvest ever get lost because of me? Were we ever unable to pay the bills? Did this family ever go hungry?”
He couldn’t answer because the answer was no. I had never failed. I had never let anything bad happen to this family.
“So why did you decide I could no longer take care of myself?”
“Why? Because Amber told me that there at Island, Amber told you.”
“And since when does Amber know more about my life than I do?”
Amber stepped forward with her fists clenched.
“I was just trying to help. Your son was worried about you.”
“Lies. My son was worried about the money and you were worried about getting a house without having to work to pay for it.”
“That’s not true, isn’t it? Then explain to me why the day after I signed the papers, you had already set aside $50,000 to buy an apartment in the city.”
David’s face went white. He didn’t know I had seen the messages on his phone when he left it on the table during lunch.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m not blind, David, nor deaf, nor stupid. I saw the messages with the real estate agent. I saw the floor plans for the apartment you wanted to buy with my money.”
Catherine got out of the car again, but this time she looked like a wounded beast.
“All of this is normal. Children always inherit from their parents. We were just speeding up the process.”
“Speeding up? Do you mean you were waiting for me to die?”
“No, I mean it was logical to plan for the future.”
“The future? My future? Without asking me what I wanted for my future.”
I walked to the fence that divides my property from Helen’s. In the distance, I could see the light from her kitchen. She was probably making dinner, unaware that the war that would define the rest of my life was unfolding here.
