“He was angry with her.”
“When?”
“Near the end.”
“Why?”
“Because she told him she had rewritten the trust.”
My hands went cold.
“Was he with her when she got sick?”
Mom cried harder.
“I don’t know.”
“Was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mom!”
“YES!”
The word exploded.
“He was there that night.”
Silence.
“He told me she was sleeping.
The next morning the nurse couldn’t wake her properly.
Two days later she was hospitalized.”
I gripped the chair.
“What medication was she taking?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Dad have access?”
“Probably.”
My stomach turned.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
She looked at me with twenty-three years of fear in her face.
“Because I have spent my entire life cleaning up after that man.”
There it was.
Not innocence.
Not exactly guilt.
A prison she had helped build.
I thought I would hate her.
Instead, for a second, I saw a woman who had chosen cowardice so many times that cowardice became the architecture of her life.
