Chapter 8 - The Family Story
Brenda showed Justin several old messages.
Nothing monstrous.
That somehow made them worse.
They were small, persistent distortions.
Chloe doesn't like visitors.
Chloe keeps Justin too busy.
Chloe thinks family traditions are outdated.
Chloe doesn't cook much.
Chloe doesn't understand how close our family is.
Each statement contained just enough truth to sound believable.
I did like advance notice before visitors.
Justin was busy.
Some traditions were outdated.
We sometimes ordered takeout.
But Virginia had arranged ordinary facts into a story in which I was slowly stealing her son.
Justin read the messages twice.
Then he put down Brenda's phone.
"How long?"
"About two years," Brenda said.
Two years.
Almost our entire marriage.
Virginia didn't deny it.
She apologized.
This time publicly.
She called relatives she'd spoken to.
She corrected the things she'd exaggerated.
It embarrassed her terribly.
That was probably why it mattered.
Consequences made apologies real.
Then came the hospital appointment.
The abnormality was not cancer.
Virginia would need monitoring and a minor procedure, but the immediate fear lifted.
Walter cried in the parking garage.
Justin hugged his mother.
I hugged her too.
And for several hours, everything else disappeared.
But relief created a new question.
Now that Virginia no longer needed to remain in Sacramento indefinitely, would she leave and allow distance to bury everything?
Or would she finish what she'd started repairing?
Virginia surprised us.
"I want to stay until Friday," she said.
"Why?" Justin asked.
She looked at me.
"Because I don't want to leave this house the way I entered it."
That week would become the strangest and most important week of our relationship.
And it began with Virginia standing in my kitchen, holding a flowerpot.
May you like
"Where would you like this?"
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