Chapter 13: The Luncheon

Clive read the text over my shoulder and didn't say a word.

Then he got out of bed, pulled on yesterday's trousers and called his bank on speaker.

A hold song, then a woman who was very sorry.

The wire was final. The power of attorney was valid on its face.

He hung up and stood at the window with the phone against his mouth.

"I'll have a revocation drafted by noon," he said. "Her lawyer gets it today."

"No."

He turned around.

"Don't mail it," I said. "Hand it to her."

"She'll throw it in the pond."

"Not in front of people."

My phone buzzed again on the sheet.

Marigold this time.

"Thank-you luncheon Saturday on the terrace. Mom's junk is still in your room. Gone by one or it's in the dumpster."

I turned the screen so he could read it.

"She wants you in through the kitchen with your head down," he said.

"She wants an audience."

"And you're giving her one."

"I'm giving her two of us." I got out of his bed and found my dress on the floor. "Bring the revocation Saturday. Signed."

On Saturday the terrace at Briarwood was set for twenty women in sundresses.

Pink peonies on every table. A cake shaped like the house, with sugar windows.

The kitchen door was locked.

The housekeeper met me at the side porch, red in the face.

"She took the key off my ring, Miss Iris. I'm sorry."

"Then I'll go out the front way," I said.

The front way ran across the terrace.

My old room was at the top of the back stairs. Somebody had already stacked my mother's things by the door.

Four boxes. TRASH on every lid in Marigold's round hand.

Inside the first was my mother's sheet music, the reading glasses she lost in every room, and a cardigan that still smelled like her.

Not the perfume. Her.

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