She told me over coffee.
Said it was too disruptive for the congregation. Can you imagine? Patricia, who organized the Christmas bazaar for a decade.
I could imagine. I could imagine it very well.
Richard lost his job, she continued. The store owner didn’t want the publicity and someone spray painted their garage door. Had to repaint it twice.
I didn’t feel satisfaction. I didn’t feel pity either. Just a hollow kind of nothing.
She’s been calling everyone, Margaret said, trying to explain, saying it was a misunderstanding that the evidence was planted, that you manipulated the investigators.
She shook her head.
Nobody’s answering anymore.
Good.
Margaret reached across the table and took my hand.
She’s my sister. I grew up with her. And what she did to you?
Her voice caught.
That’s not family. That’s not anything I recognize.
I squeezed her hand.
It’s not your fault.
I know, but I still feel it.
We sat in silence for a moment. Outside the coffee shop window, life went on. Cars passed. People laughed. The world kept spinning.
The gambling, I finally said. How bad was it? Richard’s gambling.
Margaret’s face darkened.
Bad. 180,000, maybe more, to people you don’t want to owe money to.
That explained the desperation, not that it excused anything. She thought she could fix it by burning my life down.
She thought wrong.
Yes, she did.
The court date came on a gray Thursday in April. I sat in the back row of the courtroom, watching my mother in her orange jumpsuit, her wrists cuffed in front of her. Her hair had grown out, gray showing at the roots now. No salon appointments in county jail. She looked smaller than I remembered, older.
She didn’t turn around to see if I was there. Maybe she knew. Maybe she didn’t want to know.
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