The Anniversary Dinner He Gave to Her novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Petty

Neil and Gail try to talk Lydia into staying, and she finds her grandmother's money moved to an account in a dead man's name.

I drove home with the ring box on the passenger seat and my hands still shaking on the wheel.

In the driveway I sat with the engine off.

Then I went inside, pulled the big suitcase out of the hall closet and opened it on the bed.

I packed the way I do at work, in order. Scrubs first, then the good boots, then the folder with my passport and my grandmother's letters.

My phone buzzed on the dresser.

It was a video from a woman I didn't know. She had filmed me taking the ring out of Cora's hand.

Forty thousand people had already seen it.

Under it somebody had written: "Her face when the ring hit the glass."

I put the phone face down and kept packing.

At eleven the garage door opened.

Neil came up the stairs two at a time and stopped in the bedroom doorway.

He was still in his good suit, and his tie was pulled loose.

"Please don't do this," he said.

"Do what? Walk out of a dinner I wasn't invited to?"

"It wasn't a secret dinner."

"It said, Don't tell Lydia."

He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand.

"Cora's alone, Lydia. It's the day her husband died. It's the day my brother should have been sitting there, and he wasn't."

"It's the day you promised me the window table."

"It was one night."

"It was our night."

"I'd already bought the ring," he said. "It was sitting in my drawer. She was crying in my mother's kitchen and I just thought, she needs something to hold."

"You gave her mine."

"I'll buy you another one."

"I don't want another one, Neil. I wanted that one, and I wanted you to hand it to me."

He sat down on the edge of the bed.

He did that when he knew he'd lost an argument. He sat down and made himself small.

"Mom says you've been hard on Cora."

"Your mother says a lot of things."

"She's grieving."

"So am I," I said. "Dale was my brother-in-law. I've been at every one of these dinners for two years. Nobody ever poured me a glass."

He had no answer for that.

Downstairs the front door opened, and I heard heels on the hall floor.

"Neil?"

It was Gail.

She had changed out of her pearls and into a grey coat, and she came into the bedroom without knocking.

"Well," she said, looking at the suitcase. "Is this the performance?"

"Mom," Neil said.

"No, let her go ahead. She wanted a scene, she got one. Forty thousand people, Neil. Your father's golf partners are watching it."

"I'm leaving, Gail."

"Then leave. But you'll apologize to Cora first. She's sitting in my kitchen right now with her eyes swollen shut because of you."

"I don't owe Cora anything."

Gail's mouth thinned.

"You owe this family ten years," she said. "We took you in when you had nothing. A girl with a grandmother's teapot and a student loan."

"I paid that loan."

"With what?"

"With my own paycheck."

"Lydia," Neil said. "Please. Stop."

I zipped the suitcase.

Then I picked up my phone to book a hotel, because I wasn't going to sleep in that house.

The banking app opened on the joint account.

I looked at it for a moment without understanding.

The checking balance was fine.

The savings balance, the one line I never touched, said 412 dollars.

Last night it had said 80,412.

That was my grandmother's money. She'd left it to me when she died, and I had put it in the joint account the week Neil and I got the house, because he said a marriage shouldn't have two piles.

I tapped the line.

There was one transaction, at 9:02 that morning.

Transfer out, 80,000 dollars.

The account number ended in 6615, and the name beside it said D. Brandwell.

"Neil," I said. "What is this?"

He looked at the screen, and his shoulders came down.

"It's the estate account," he said.

"Whose estate?"

"Dale's. Mom set it up. There are bills still, and the boat insurance, and..."

"Dale has been dead for two years."

"There's paperwork."

"I did the paperwork for my grandmother's estate, Neil. It took six weeks and it closed. What kind of estate has an account that was opened in June?"

I turned the screen so he could see the open date.

Gail took a step forward.

"That is family business," she said. "It's none of yours."

"It's my money."

"It's the Brandwell family's money the second you put it in a Brandwell account."

"Mom," Neil said, very quietly.

"Don't you tell me to stop."

I picked up the suitcase.

Neil stood up, and for the first time that night he looked at me and did not look afraid of his mother.

He looked afraid of me.

"Lydia," he said. "Please don't call the bank."

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