Page 97 of Don't Tell

My mother is on the porch.

She is in a cream coat. Her hair is freshly dyed again. Behind her at the bottom of the steps is Darryl. He is leaning against the porch railing in a denim jacket.

"Suzanne."

"How did you find me?"

"You weren't at the apartment. I knew you'd be here. Where else would you go?"

I don't answer.

"Sweetheart, I just need to talk to you for a minute. Just one minute. The money — Mr. Nightingale's money — it ran dry, baby, you know how it goes. I had a thing come up I wasn't expecting. If you could just call him for me. I tried to reach him the other day, and he was not as kind as the first time, he — "

"Stop."

"Suzanne."

"You go to him yourself."

"He won't take my call, baby."

"Then he is not taking it."

"Suzanne."

I step past Renée and stand in the doorway.

"Leave."

"I just want to talk."

"I have spent fifteen years listening to you talk. I'm done."

She tries again. She mentions Cade, the check, and how grateful she was for his generosity, how she has been telling everyone what a good man my boyfriend is, how she has been bragging to the women at her bridge group.

"The check was a mistake."

"Suzanne — "

"Not the money. The mistake was thinking any amount of money would ever be enough. You were never going to take the check and leave me alone. You were always going to come back."

"That is not — "

"You took the college fund. You took it, and you spent it on him." I don't look at Darryl. "You took the years between thirteen and seventeen, and you used them to teach me I was small. You told me painting was for other people. You told me my body was a thing men would use. You told me I was nothing without you and you spent every day proving I was less than nothing with you. That is what you did."

She opens her mouth.

"And the worst thing you did was none of that. The worst thing you did was leave me with Marguerite for thirteen years and let me believe she was mine. Then you come back when she is dead and act like the decade you had not been there entitled you to me. It did not. It did not entitle you to one minute of me."

Renée steps up beside me.

She does not raise her voice either.

"You should know something."

My mother's eyes go to her.

"Mom told me what she thought of you. Before she died, she told me. I have been holding it for fifteen years because I did not want to hurt you with it, and I'm tired of holding it, and you are at this door, and so I'm going to hand it to you now."