People without money sometimes make the opposite mistake and believe needing help means they have surrendered the right to say no.
Both are wrong.
Make your decision standing up.
Love,
Mom
P.S. If Harlan still scowls when he thinks, tell him his mother spent eighteen years trying to make him stop.
I lowered the letter.
Mara burst out laughing.
Harlan stared at the ceiling.
“I do not scowl.”
“You absolutely scowl,” Mara said.
I laughed too.
It surprised me.
Three days earlier I had been terrified of Harlan Voss.
Now I was sitting in an old theater with his sister, holding a letter from my dead mother while the terrifying man in question argued that his face had been misrepresented.
Life was strange.
Then I remembered the vote.
My smile disappeared.
“What are you asking permission to do?”
Harlan walked to the table.
He opened a different folder.
Architectural plans.
