I pulled out a chair for her. She remained standing.
“Max keeps asking if you’re mad at us,” she said. “Mom tells him to leave you alone. She says you need quiet because you’re getting confused.”
I felt a brief, hot flash of anger.
“I’m not confused, Lily.”
“I know.” Her voice dropped. “I told him that.”
She reached into her backpack and took out a folded piece of paper. It was a drawing Max had made: a turkey with oversized wings, standing between three people whose hands reached toward one another.
“He wanted you to have it.”
I held the paper carefully.
“He told me the turkey should’ve flown away before dinner,” Lily said.
I laughed once, then covered my mouth. Lily’s eyes filled, and mine followed.
“I miss you,” she whispered.
“I miss you too.”
I wanted to tell her where I was going. I wanted to hand her a key. But closing was still two days away, and Stuart still had his old emergency key to this house. I would not put Lily in the position of keeping a secret she had never asked to carry.
“You can call me whenever you want,” I said. “I’ll make sure you know how to find me.”
She nodded, though she looked unconvinced.
Before she left, she stopped beside the packing boxes.
“Grandma, Dad’s been acting strange for months.”
“In what way?”
“He answers calls outside, even when it’s cold. Mom gets angry if he lets them go to voicemail.” Lily hesitated. “I heard them arguing about a loan.”
I kept my voice calm. “What kind of loan?”
“I don’t know. Dad said he’d never agreed to it. Mom said it didn’t matter because he’d signed.”
She seemed ashamed of having listened.
“You didn’t do anything wrong by telling me,” I said.
Lily picked up her backpack. “I just don’t want you to think he always talks to you that way.”
“I know he hasn’t always.”
That answer hurt more than I expected.
After she left, I sat at the kitchen table with Max’s drawing in front of me. Stuart’s shouting at Thanksgiving had been real. So had the calculation I had heard in the study. Lily’s account did not excuse either one.
But I remembered the word he had used before correcting it.
Your future. Our future.
I called Ellen and told her about the loan. She advised me to keep the sale and my finances private from Stuart, and to let her know immediately if anyone presented a document bearing my name.
The following morning, I found out why Jennifer had been so interested in the study.
