Chapter 6: The Locked Door

I set the cup down in its saucer and did not lift it again.

Across the table, my mother smiled.

"You haven't touched the roast," she said.

"I'm not hungry."

"You used to be a girl who ate."

"You used to be a woman who was dead."

Corbin laughed once into his napkin.

Jonas was in the fifth chair at the end of the table, with a plate in front of him that he had not touched either.

He was looking at my cup.

I slid it a little to the side with one finger, and he gave me the smallest nod.

"Let's be adults," my father said. He poured himself wine with a hand that was not quite steady. "Your mother has a proposal."

"I'm listening."

"A house," my mother said. "Anywhere in the state you like, in your own name. A nurse to live in. An allowance of twelve thousand a month."

"For what?"

"For signing your shares over to the family trust on your birthday. Where they've always belonged."

"They were Grandma's."

"They were Grandma's until she left them to a twenty-year-old girl who had just broken the family in half."

"I didn't break it," I said. "Dad did, with a drawer that had a false bottom."

My father coughed into his hand.

"We'll make that right too," he said. "Whatever the mill owes you. We'll talk about it."

"Not one word about it at this table," Corbin said.

"Let her talk," my mother said, quite gently. "She has come such a long way."

I put both hands on the edge of the table and pushed.

Jonas started to rise, and I shook my head at him.

"I need the powder room," I said.

"Down the hall, second door," my mother said. "Do you need help?"

"No."

I took the cane and went out of the dining room with my free hand on the wall.

I made my way past the second door to the third.

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