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“Look, your grandparents… they were difficult people. It’s always been complicated between us. And I do think they’re ashamed of me because I decided to have you on my own. I never wanted to become the trophy wife with a rich husband they raised me to be. But they were never ashamed of you.”
August grinds her teeth. “They didn’t even know me.”
“Well… they did, kind of. I’d—I’d keep them updated, sometimes. And they’d hear from St. Margaret’s how you were doing.”
“Why would St. Margaret’s talk to them about me?”
Another pause. A long one.
“Because they keep the people paying a student’s tuition updated on their student.”
What?
“What? They—they paid my tuition? This whole time?”
“Yes.”
“But you told me—you always said we were broke because you had to pay for St. Margaret’s.”
“I did! I paid for your lunches, I paid for your field trips, your uniforms, your extracurriculars, your—your library fines. But they were the ones who wrote the big checks. They’d send one every birthday.”
August’s childhood and teenage years flutter into focus—the way kids used to look at her in her Walmart tennis shoes, the things her mom said they couldn’t afford to replace after the storm. “So then, why were we broke, Mom? Why were we broke?”
“Well, August, I mean… it’s not cheap, to pay for an investigation. Sometimes there were people I had to pay for information, there was equipment to buy—”
“How long?” August asks. “How long did they send money?”
“Only until you graduated high school, honey. I—I told them to stop once you turned eighteen, so they did. I didn’t want them to keep helping us forever.”
“And what if I had wanted help?”
She’s quiet for a few seconds. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, based on the will, they would have, right?”
“Maybe so.”
“You’re telling me, I’m sitting here on a mountain of student loans that I didn’t have to take out, because you didn’t want to tell me this?”
“August, they—they’re not like you and me, okay? They always judged me, and they would have judged the way we lived, the way I raised you, and I didn’t want that for you. I didn’t want to give them a chance to treat you the way they treated me, or Augie.”
“But they wanted—they wanted to see me?”
“August, you don’t understand—”
“So, you just decided for me that I wouldn’t have a family? That it’d be just you and me? This isn’t some Gilmore Girls fantasy, okay? This is my life, and I’ve spent most of it alone, because you told me I was, that I should be, that I should be happy about it, but it was only because you didn’t want anyone to come between us, wasn’t it?”
Her mom’s voice comes back sharp, with a bitter, defensive anger that August knows lives in her too. “You can’t even imagine it, August. You can’t imagine the way they treated Augie. He left because they made him miserable, and I couldn’t lose you like that—”
“Can you shut up about Augie for once? It’s been almost fifty years! He’s gone! People leave!”
There’s a terrible moment of silence, long enough for August to play back what she said, but not long enough to regret it.
“August,” her mom says once, like a nail going in.
“You know what?” August says. “You never listen to me. You never care about what I want unless it’s what you want. I told you five years ago that I didn’t want to work the case with you anymore, and you didn’t care. Sometimes it’s like you had me just so you could have a—a fucking assistant.”
“August—”
