10. Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Maci
S unday morning, I move quietly into the kitchen, brewing coffee before the sun comes up. Squirrels rustle the leaves near the back porch, interrupting the whir of the coffee maker.
The wooden blinds in the common rooms were left open, allowing the early light in. Gripping my scalding mug of coffee like an anchor, I move into the living room and peer into the front yard. A tornado of emotions swirls inside me. I’m already exhausted at anxiously awaiting what the day holds.
Over the years, I’ve become good at meeting Stephanie’s self-serving tendencies head-on. Her ability to find advantageous loopholes in conversation is uncanny. It’s what woke me earlier than necessary, expecting her to be pilfering around like a squirrel. My stomach tightens.
Stephanie travels in a hushed manner down the stairs and directly into the living room a short time later. Her dark, wide-leg trousers are exaggerated in the shadowed light of the room opposite her light-colored top. Tall heels regularly grace her feet, but today her steps fall silent on the hardwood, feet clad in soft flats. An intentional change, no doubt. She makes a beeline for the hutch situated on the back wall. Some of Nana’s oldest pieces of serving ware are housed within it.
I sip my coffee silently. Stephanie registers that someone occupies the room with her as she passes me midway through the space .
“Jesus Christ!” She startles and clutches her chest, scolding me in an uncharacteristic loss of composure. “You should have said something Maci. I could have had a heart attack.”
“Two in one week. Wouldn’t that be a tale?” Riling her brings such satisfaction. I smother a smirk.
“It’s rude to skulk about in the dark.” Her tone is laced with venom.
I shrug. “I didn’t want to disturb anyone.” We both know I’m lying.
“Well, since you’re up already, you can help me pull out the china from the hutch.” She continues on her path.
The antique cabinet is somewhat misplaced. It sits on a wall in the living room instead of the dining room. The dining set, which has seating for six, is too large for the space. It really should be called a breakfast room, but there’s no other dining space. Thus, the hutch had to be housed elsewhere.
“It’s just after seven. You told Randi and Liv eight.”
“No, I did not. Randi said they would be here by eight. ”
And, there it is.
My grip on my mug tightens and I cock my head. “Do you hear yourself talk?”
“There’s entirely too much to go through in a few hours, Maci Grace. I didn’t see the value in arguing with her in a heightened emotional state.”
“The items in this house have been accumulating for half a century. You knew what you were doing. Not to mention, probate hasn’t even begun. This is why people have wills.”
Her mask slips for a millisecond, perturbed, before she secures it in place again. “I was only trying to help.” Finished addressing me, she turns to the hutch.
“What are you planning to do with it all? There’s nowhere to sort it here.” Stephanie doesn’t respond. She hasn’t thought of that part. I sigh and set my mug on a side table, pretending not to notice a small vase of already wilting flowers.
The coffee table in the living room is the easiest thing to move. I promptly push it across the floor toward the hutch.
“Thank you,” she says stiffly. Her face betrays no emotion.
The light coming through the wooden blinds is brightening quickly.
Stephanie turns to the hutch. “Despite what you might think, I’m not trying to steal from my sister. I may not be as sentimental as the rest of you,” she waves a hand behind her head dismissively, “but I do have a heart.”
There isn’t a time in my life when my mother hasn't consumed herself with appearances and emotional control. Anything of emotional value has been diminished at every turn for as long as I can remember. Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little surprised at the requirement of the will.
Stephanie eyes the contents of the cabinet. A set of white appetizer plates fills the space front and center. She reaches behind them, gingerly removing two small rabbit figurines. Her fingers trace over the knickknacks. The silence is heavy with tension.
It’s as if we’ve taken a collective breath that neither of us is ready to relinquish. Her lips are pursed. A sixth sense whispers that she is on the verge of speaking, of sharing in a way I’m unfamiliar with.
“There was a time when you trusted me.” Her voice is soft, careful. “When you talked to me.”
My eyes set on the rabbits, rolling back and forth between Stephanie’s fingers.
She continues, as transfixed by the rabbits as I am. “I wasn’t surprised when Alan started coming around that you were slow to warm up.”
“The word you’re looking for is permafrost.” I can’t help myself. Stephanie shoots a warning look over her shoulder, but I don’t cower .
“Alan was never meant to replace your father. He may not have been the father he should have been, but that was never the goal.”
I hardly remember my father, and not in the way she's hinting at, either. The vague memories I have of him include a tall, well-built man with dark hair and a scruffy beard. Though Stephanie always said he was dangerous, she hasn’t been an open book about him. I was too young to pick up anything when he was around. My memories are halted in that foggy, preschool haze.
She finally sets the two rabbits onto the coffee table behind her before reaching back into the hutch and slowly removing items.
It’s an effort not to move from where I stand, but Stephanie’s movements hint at being tied to her words so I plant my feet intent to listen. The Thanksgiving platter is unloaded near the rabbits with a gravy boat on either side.
“I wasn’t surprised at Mother’s instructions in the will. She never liked him.” I can’t tell if she’s suppressing a scoff. “Alan liked to play cards. He would go to these men’s club events once or twice a week. It was never a concern of mine. We needed time apart.”
Her methodical movements continue. She avoids eye contact. An ominous tingle starts at the base of my skull.
“The second year we were together, he got into some trouble.” She swallows and is quiet for a long minute, the silence encouraging me to calculate the timeline. Why is she telling me this?
“He had borrowed from the house—that’s what they call the club—but he had a bad spell and wasn’t able to pay it back. The interest was stacking up.” Another long pause.
“He started to get threats from the club.” Stephanie removes a butter dish and two ceramic pie plates, then begins pulling plates out of the hutch one-by-one. “We thought it might be a good idea to move. ”
The morning light fills the room now. Stephanie finally looks at me.
“Alan came up with the money.” The words come faster now. “He paid the club. They stopped allowing him to play cards, but even if they hadn’t, he had decided to quit. He was done.” She shakes her head at the memories.
“They wanted an extra fee. Like some sort of exit deal. It was so absurd!” Her usual condescending tone returns briefly. “He got it, though. Alan got it all. We didn’t think there was a reason to move. But then…”
Goosebumps break out over my skin.
She doesn’t need to go on. We both know what she’s alluding to.
I can almost feel the scalding heat of that August day again. Almost recall the gloved hand squeezing my chin when we were accosted in broad daylight in a grocery store parking lot. My jaw locks.
A tall man in a ski mask shouting at us. Gripping my face and calling me a “spoiled princess” who “needed to learn a lesson”. Though it was never clear what he wanted, his overwhelming presence as he basically shoved me into the back of our open SUV, and the way he seemed disgusted with me, is forever etched into my memory.
It never occurred to me the aggressive interaction had anything to do with Stephanie or Alan.
Her eyes linger on mine. I say nothing.
Stephanie’s words break through the memory. “So we moved. You were so angry with me.”
I remember the feeling well. A week before I was supposed to start high school, my entire world flipped upside down. Almost overnight, we moved from thirty minutes away from my family, to two hours away. No one would explain anything.
She returns to her task and her voice smoothes over. “I was doing my best to keep you safe. Alan was obviously frustrated and you wouldn’t speak to us. Mother was furious. She never agreed with our decision to move somewhere safer.”
As usual, her demeanor lacks any sense of empathy. She always seems upset with everyone but Alan.
“But you wouldn’t let your walls down for Alan. You couldn’t see what had been sacrificed to protect us.”
My brows furrow. Beneath the composed surface, something she drilled into me over the years, my blood is raging. I’m about to snap.
“It was a weird custody agreement with his son, and once we moved, he basically never saw him. They communicated through letters and email for a while, but every time I asked about him, Alan got more agitated so I stopped asking.” Stephanie presses her fingertips to her cheek bone for the tiniest of seconds.
I zero in on the movement, my rage quieting. Has Alan hit her? Have I been so self-consumed that I missed it? He was always cold and calculated, but never aggressive.
Except for the one time. But that was directed at me.
Before I can ask, Stephanie continues.
“More than once, he told me he just wanted a thank you. An acknowledgment of all we had done to keep you safe.” She looks pointedly at me, halting her efforts to remove the contents of the hutch.
A thank you .
“You’re both delusional if you think you’re going to get gratitude from me.” Taking after Stephanie, my words come out icy. Her stare doesn’t waver. “You and your gambling-addicted husband put me in danger. Put you in danger. Paying them back was his own dues. Moving was responsible. ”
All the hatred and anger I’ve kept bottled inside pressurizes. “You just said the entire situation was caused by him. I owe him nothing. Nothing. The very least of which is a thank you.”
My mother gives me her bored look again. “I thought you’d say as much.” She sets the trifle dish she’s holding onto the coffee table among the other items. “I did what I could to protect you.”
“Protect me? I told you what happened the night he kicked me out. Did you know he was aggressive?”
He’d been brewing for days. I never knew why. He snapped during a disagreement about what time I should be home. At which point I told him that having turned eighteen, I was no longer bound by his ridiculous rules.
Fury coats her face. “You were a teenager! A spoiled teenager! You had massive attitude problems and all my mother did was coddle you. A thank you wouldn’t have hurt. An apology every now and then.”
“An apology? For what?” I’m positive my voice is echoing through the house now and red spills into the edges of my vision.
“For your attitude.”
“My attitude?” I deadpan. “For being upset that you moved me away from my family, my friends, a week before I started high school? That at every opportunity that asshole—"
“Watch your mouth.” In an instant, she’s like a rabid dog, baring her teeth at me.
“That asshole ,” I repeat louder, leaning forward, “attempted to belittle me and make me feel inferior. That after everything, he put his hands on me, trying to strong-arm me into submission and you sided with him.
“At best, you stood idly by while I was verbally abused and insulted about clothing and normal teenage activities among so much more. At worst, you kept me in a situation where I was in physical danger, that you were aware of, by the hands of a man you were married to. You didn’t protect me. You were a willing accomplice.”
She’s unaffected by the venom in my words. “You pulled a knife on him, Maci!”
“Yes! To protect myself! At the end, I did pull a knife on him. And he’s lucky I didn’t gut him like a fish!”
Alan had backed me into the kitchen wall, snatching my chin in his hand and telling me what a princess I was. How I would follow his rules or leave. His fingers dug into my jaw so hard they left bruises.
Following the incident at the grocery store, I carried a pocket knife with me. It came from Nana’s shed and provided me with a semblance of protection. His actions mimicked that August day and the knife basically pulled itself out and greeted his hip in a whisper.
“You would’ve gone to jail. I made sure he didn’t press charges.” Condescension floods her words.
I stare at her in silence. “I can’t imagine he listens to you. What did you do?”
She feigns aggravation and doesn’t respond.
After all this time, she continues to protect him. She’s chosen him over me at every opportunity. My hand lifts in her direction, willing her to see what’s gone on. “We could’ve gotten help. For any of it. The gambling. The money. Him. We could’ve gotten away.”
“You’re always so dramatic.” Dismissed again.
Where is the bastard anyway? The house isn’t that big. He’s heard enough of what’s going on. I half-wish he’d come downstairs so he can see what else I carry on me these days.
Randi’s tires crunch over the gravel drive. She’s early, but after dealing with Stephanie’s antics as long as I have, I’m not surprised .
I turn on my heel. Rather than opening the front door to greet my aunt and cousin, I walk out and slam the solid door firmly behind me. The glass rattles.
What a fucking joke.