Troublemakers Mess With the Wrong Girls novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday Dinner

Jo tears up the check at Grandma's table and Dennis's wife stops filming. Grandma says Dennis will lose the house and it will be Jo's fault.

Grandma's dining room seats ten, and it has been arranged the same way for thirty years.

Grandma sits at the head. Dennis sits at her right hand. Dad sits at her left, where he can reach the rolls.

Mom and I sit at the far end by the kitchen door, where the plates come last.

This Sunday Dennis's wife was beside him with her phone propped against the gravy boat.

"Frank," Grandma said, before anyone had picked up a fork. "You've brought something for me."

Dad looked at Mom.

Mom was cutting her chicken into small, even pieces.

"I brought something," Dad said. He took an envelope out of his jacket. "It isn't a check, Ma."

"What is it?"

"It's the number for my accountant. Anything about my money goes through him now."

Grandma's smile stayed on her face and stopped everywhere else.

"Your accountant," she said. "Maureen, did you think of that?"

"Frank thought of it," Mom said. "He's very good with numbers when he's allowed to be."

Dennis laughed, a short, mean sound.

"Ma. Come on. It's eighty-six grand. I can't even pay a contractor."

"My father spent a hundred and forty thousand dollars of his own money on Dennis's house," I said, "and you're asking him for more."

"Nobody asked you, Jo."

"You're serving me chicken. I'm allowed to talk."

"Let her talk, Dennis," said his wife.

It was the first thing she'd said all night.

She had turned off the camera on her phone, and I noticed it.

"Dennis has a family," Grandma said to the table. "Dennis has a wife and a mortgage and a reputation in this town. Some of us haven't had an easy life, and we need our family to show up."

"Which of us had the easy life?" Mom asked.

Nobody answered.

Mom had worked nights for twenty-three years to keep our house. Dad had worked two shifts for twenty-six.

Dennis had sold boats, and Grandma had called it a career.

"I'm only saying what family does," Grandma said.

"Then let's talk about what family does."

I stood up.

Dad put a hand on my arm, and I kept standing.

"Dad's retirement went to the favorite son," I said. "That's one hundred and forty thousand. The eleven thousand when I was twelve. The truck. The bail for the bar fight. I don't have the full list. Dad does."

"Jo." Dad's voice was low.

"You sat there Thursday and cried on the phone. And Dennis stood in a new kitchen and applauded himself."

"Sit down."

"Not until you tell me why Dennis's kitchen has a wine fridge and my father's still driving a nineteen-year-old truck."

Grandma put her napkin on the table.

"Because Dennis needs me," she said. "Frank has never needed anybody."

The room went quiet.

I think it was the truest thing she had ever said, and she hadn't heard herself say it.

Dad's face crumpled for a second and then smoothed out again.

Dennis leaned back in his chair. "So where's the check, Frank?"

Dad did not reach into his jacket.

I did.

I'd taken the second envelope out of Dad's coat in the hall when he wasn't looking.

It was a check for eighty-six thousand dollars, made out to Rooney Build and signed by my father in his careful machinist's handwriting.

He'd written it last night after Caleb left, I realized. He had meant to hand it over.

He just hadn't been brave enough to say so.

I held it up so everyone could see the number.

Then I tore it in half, and in half again.

"Jo!" Dad said.

"I'm sorry, Dad."

"You can't just do that!"

"I just did."

Dennis was on his feet. His wife was staring at the torn pieces on the tablecloth.

Mom had put her fork down, and she did not stop me.

"That money was for my son," Grandma said, very softly.

"Your son's name is Dennis," I said. "Dad's name is Frank. You've had fifty-two years to learn them both."

Grandma stood up from the head of the table.

She was five foot two and seventy-nine, and she had run that room since before I was born.

"Then Dennis loses the house," she said. "And you can explain that to your father when he's sleeping in a rented room at seventy."

Dennis sat down hard. His wife picked up her phone and put it in her purse.

Mom took my hand under the table and squeezed it once.

My own phone buzzed in my pocket.

It was a text from a number I didn't know.

Saturday, 2pm. Wear boots. Caleb.

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