Chapter 17 - The Bank Statement on the Kitchen Island
That evening, the condo on Barton Springs Road was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of traffic rolling across the Colorado River bridge. Sarah was sitting at the kitchen island with her laptop open, surrounded by three different colored highlighters and a thick stack of legal documents tied together with red cotton string.
She looked up as I dropped my backpack on the wooden floorboards.
"Your father called," Sarah said without preamble.
I froze, my hand hovering over the handle of the refrigerator. "When?"
"Twenty minutes ago," she said, tapping her fountain pen against the corner of the Mac screen. "He’s staying at a cheap motel off Ben White Boulevard—the one with the flickering neon sign and the vending machines that only take quarters. He’s working two days a week at a commercial plumbing outfit in Buda, and he’s trying to negotiate a settlement with Karen’s divorce attorney in Dallas."
"What did he want?" I asked, my voice flat.
"He wanted to know if you'd talk to him," Sarah said, her blue eyes fixing on mine with an intense, analytical clarity. "Not about money. Not about the house. He said he found something in the bottom of his toolbox when he was clearing out his van last night—something your mother left in the back of her old Subaru before she went into hospice."
I didn't move. The chill of the refrigerator air washed over my ankles.
"What is it?" I asked.
Sarah reached beside her laptop and picked up a small, rectangular object wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with faded yellow cotton string—the exact same string Helen used to use when she wrapped homemade sourdough loaves for the neighbors.
"He left it with the doorman downstairs," Sarah said. "He didn't come up. He said if you didn't want to open it, I could throw it in the trash compactor down in the basement."
I walked over to the island. The butcher paper was old, yellowed at the edges where the humidity had gotten to it, but the handwriting on the white address label was unmistakable: crisp, slanted, and written in my mother’s precise fountain-pen ink.
*For Lily. When she’s ready.*
"Do you want me to open it for you?" Sarah asked softly, her corporate armor slipping just enough to reveal the aunt underneath.
May you like
"No," I said, my fingers tracing the knot in the yellow string. "I can do it."
***
