Chapter 4 - The Unraveling of Denise
"Wait! Margaret, please! You can't leave me here with them!"
My mother, Denise, scrambled up from the sofa, spilling her wine across the beige wool rug. She ignored the deep red stain spreading beneath her heels, reaching out with trembling, ring-laden fingers toward Grandma Margaret’s coat.
Grandma turned on her heel, her expression colder than the November sleet tapping against the windowpanes. "Do not touch me, Denise."
Denise froze, her hands hovering mid-air. "Mom, I’m your daughter! I didn't steal anything! I didn't spend a penny of that money! Look at my bank account—look at my car! I drive a six-year-old Honda! Patricia did this, not me!"
"You sat by," I said, my voice shaking as I held Lily closer. The nursery room blankets Patricia had brought down as a 'charity gesture' earlier that afternoon sat on the entry table. I felt a wave of nausea just looking at them. "Mom, you came to my apartment in August. Do you remember that? You came over because you needed to borrow my vacuum cleaner because yours broke."
Denise swallowed, her lower lip quivering. "Maya, honey—"
"The refrigerator was unplugged because I couldn't pay the electric bill that month," I continued, each memory scraping like a razor against my throat. "I had Lily’s milk in a plastic cooler with bags of melting ice from the gas station down the street. I was sitting on an upturned milk crate because I had sold our kitchen table on Facebook Marketplace for forty dollars. You looked right at the cooler. You looked at my bare apartment. And you know what you said?"
Denise squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to answer.
"You told me that if I budgeted better, I wouldn't have to live like an animal," I said, a bitter, breathless laugh escaping me. "You told me that Evan would be disappointed in how weak I was being. And all that time, you knew Grandma had sent something. You thought Patricia was giving me 'cash envelopes'—and you never once asked why I couldn't even afford twenty dollars for electricity?"
"I thought you were hiding it!" Denise shrieked, breaking into full, ugly hysterics. "I thought you were being spiteful! I thought you were saving it to move away from us and take Lily to Evan's parents in Oregon! Patricia told me that! She said you had secret accounts!"
"Patricia told you whatever smoothed over your cowardice," Grandma Margaret interjected, her tone lethal. "Denise, you have spent your entire adult life choosing the easiest path. When your father died, you let Patricia take control of the family affairs because you didn't want the paperwork. When your daughter’s husband died in a horrific accident, you let Patricia manage her support because you couldn't bear to sit in a room with someone whose grief made you uncomfortable."
"Mom—"
"You receive a monthly living stipend of seven thousand dollars from the family trust, Denise," Grandma continued ruthlessly. "Funded entirely by the portfolio your father and I built over fifty years. Do you know where that stipend goes as of midnight tonight?"
Denise’s eyes widened in sheer terror. "No... Mom, no. That’s my only income. I can't work, my back—"
"Your back managed eighteen holes of golf at the country club last Tuesday, according to your Instagram account," Clara Hernandez noted calmly from the dining table, her fingers dancing across the keyboard without looking up. "And three weekend spa retreats in Vail over the last four months."
"Your stipend is suspended, Denise," Grandma declared. "Indefinitely. If you wish to eat, if you wish to pay your utilities, you may petition the probate court once Clara finishes auditing every dollar that has passed between you and Patricia over the last five years. If one single cent of that one hundred and eighty thousand dollars trickled into your pocket, you will stand in the same criminal docket beside your sister."
"Maya! Tell her!" Denise fell to her knees on the rug, reaching for my jeans. "Maya, please! I’m your mother! Lily needs her grandmother!"
I looked down at the woman who had birthed me. I remembered waiting for her to call after Evan's funeral. I remembered sitting by the telephone in a hospital waiting room with my newborn baby, waiting for my mother to show up and hold my hand while the mortuary took my husband away. She hadn't come because she had 'a migraine caused by the stress.'
"Lily has a grandmother," I whispered, glancing at Margaret. "She doesn't need an accomplice."
I stepped around her outstretched hands, walking toward Richard, who was already holding open the front door. The cool night air hit my feverish skin, crisp and clean and smelling of pine needles, washing away the stench of the Cherry Creek house.
Behind us, inside the warm, luxurious hall, Patricia’s voice rose into a frantic, gutter scream. "Robert! Call an attorney! Call Markowitz! Call him right now!"
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"With what money, Patricia?" Robert’s voice drifted out, sounding hollow, shattered, and utterly spent. "She froze the accounts. Markowitz doesn't answer the phone for people who can't pay his retainer."
***
