Chapter 14: Mother's Offer

My mother's house was on Maple Street, a white two-story with a porch that ran across the front.

The porch swing hung at the left end, where my father had put it.

The porch light was on.

It was five minutes to six, and I stood on the mat with my own pen in my coat pocket.

I had not been inside since Christmas Eve.

Mom opened the door before I knocked.

She had changed into a gray cardigan, and she had taken her makeup off.

"Come in out of the cold," she said.

The kitchen smelled of coffee and of the lemon oil she used on the table.

Two papers lay on the table, side by side, with one pen set between them.

I sat down across from her and kept my coat on.

"I'll go first," Mom said. "Because someone has to."

She put one finger on the left paper.

"This withdraws the lawsuit. It also voids the acknowledgment of debt, the whole five million, as if it had never been written."

"And the other one?"

"A management agreement." Her voice was gentle. "Whiting Home runs the page. You stay on as the creative director, at two hundred thousand a year."

"Whose name is on the page?"

"The company's."

"Then that's not an agreement," I said. "That's the paper you gave me at the party, with a salary on it."

"It's a fair offer, Willa."

"It's four times what I was paid, for giving you the thing I'd be paid for."

She took off her reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Sixty-eight people were working for me on Monday. Now I have thirty. Do you think I want this?"