Chapter 20: Ninety-Six Pages

I read the notebook until the window turned grey.

There were ninety-six pages in the same small, tidy hand.

Each entry had a date, a sum and a word or two about what it was for.

Under every one my mother had written the same short sentence, in slightly different ways.

I did not stop him.

At eight I put it on the nightstand and watched Dylan sleep with one arm flung over his head.

I didn't wake him.

I put on my boot and my coat and went out into the dark.

The house was lit when I got there.

The kitchen light was the only one on.

My mother sat at the table in her robe with two cups in front of her and a plate of toast.

She had been expecting me.

I sat down across from her.

"There are ninety-six pages," I said.

"I know how many pages there are."

"The first one is eight years old."

"I wrote it the week he took the first four thousand." She turned her cup a quarter turn. "I told myself it was a loan."

"You knew it was mine."

"I knew your Gran had put your name on it."

"Did you tell him to stop?"

"No."

"Did you ask him once?"

"I asked him where it was going. He said the family. I said all right."

I waited.

The refrigerator hummed.

"Why?" I said.

She took a long breath through her nose.

"Your grandmother never liked me," Mom said.

"In all those years, she never once called me by my name. She called me Paul's wife."

She stopped and started again.

"When she died and left everything to you, to a child, and nothing to anybody else, I thought, well. There it is. She's decided who's family."

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