Chapter 3: The Dinner Party
Six months before that dinner, Ethan’s mother, Denise Marsh, moved in with us. Her lease in Huntersville was ending, she said, and the new rent was robbery, and it would only be for a little while. Denise was sixty-three, a widow, a church volunteer, the kind of woman who sends thank you notes for thank you notes. She had lost her own house years earlier after Ethan’s father died and the bills came due, and she talked about that more than she realized. Ten months before that dinner, she had met a man named Calvin Ror at a real estate investing seminar in Charlotte. Calvin was somewhere in his fifties with silver hair and loafers he wore without socks and he called everybody friend. By that fall, he and Denise were engaged. He was at our house three or four nights a week.
For about five months, I had not been well. I was tired in a way sleep did not fix. My feet tingled as if they had fallen asleep and never fully woken up. My hair came out in the brush in soft, dark clumps. I lost eleven pounds without trying. Every time I mentioned it, Ethan rubbed my shoulders and said, “It’s grief, babe. It’s your dad. Give yourself some grace.” And I believed him. Why wouldn’t I? So the dinner, it was a Saturday at the end of September. Denise made pot roast. Calvin brought a bottle of wine that he told us the price of twice. Ethan sat at the head of the table in my father’s chair, which he had started doing that summer. I noticed it every time. I never said anything.
Calvin waited until dessert. Then he took a folded brochure out of his jacket and laid it beside my plate, smoothing it flat with two fingers like a man laying down a winning hand. “Ror Shoreline,” he said. “Fourteen townhomes, private slips. Your shoreline, Victoria, is the prettiest stretch of water on this whole side of the lake. I’m prepared to offer four point two million for the parcel. Cash at closing.” I looked at the brochure. There was an architect’s drawing of my parents’ cove with fourteen gray boxes lined up along the water and no dock at all. I looked at Ethan. He was nodding, not surprised. Nodding slowly the way you nod at something you have already heard. And that was the first moment, the very first, that something in me went quiet and watchful. They had talked about this without me in my house.
“That’s very generous, Calvin,” I said. “But no, it’s not for sale.” Calvin smiled. He had good teeth and he knew it. “Friend, can I say something with love? Grief makes us hold things too tight. Your father would want you free, not chained to a house full of ghosts.” “My father built that dock with his hands,” I said. “He’d want it to stay a dock.” Denise reached over and patted my wrist. “Nobody’s pushing you, honey.” “Good,” I said, “because I’ve actually made a decision about the house. I’m meeting with Janet Okoro on Monday. I’m putting everything into a trust, the Grayson Family Trust, and I’m going to set up a scholarship in Mom and Dad’s name for kids at the community college.”
The table went silent. Not uncomfortable silent, dead silent. Denise set her fork down on her plate harder than she needed to. The sound was small and sharp. Ethan’s smile stayed on his face, but it stopped reaching anywhere. Calvin was the only one who moved. He picked up his wine glass and lifted it toward me. “Well,” he said. “To family.” I didn’t understand it then. I understand it now. I had just told the three people at that table that in two days they would lose any way to touch what my parents left me. Janet had drafted my will four years earlier, the year my mother died. It left everything to Ethan because back then I couldn’t imagine anyone else on earth I’d want to have it. A trust would change that. After Monday, there would be nothing for anyone to inherit.
Denise brought my tea up at eleven that night, the way she had every night since spring. She knocked with her hip because her hands were full. It came in the mug she’d bought me when she moved in, the cream-colored one with the big swirly V painted on the side. She was very proud of that mug. “Extra ginger tonight,” she said. “You looked pale at dinner.” Ethan met her at the bedroom door and took the mug from her so she wouldn’t have to come all the way in. He did that a lot. He carried it to the bed, sat down on the edge of the mattress, and kissed my forehead. “Drink up, Tori,” he said. He waited while I drank. He always waited. I used to think it was one of the sweetest things about him, that he liked watching me rest. When I handed him the empty mug, he smiled and turned off the lamp.
Around midnight, I went down for a glass of water. The kitchen was dark, but the window over the sink was cracked open, and through it, I could hear low voices on the back porch. Calvin and Denise. I wouldn’t have stopped to listen, except that Calvin said my name. “Victoria’s not going to come around on her own, Denise. Friday at the latest. After Monday, it’s paper we can’t touch.” Denise said something I couldn’t hear. Calvin laughed softly. The way you laugh at a child. I stood there holding my glass of water, telling myself it was about the land deal, about his money, his investors, his townhomes. That was all. I went back up to bed. Ethan was awake. He rolled toward me in the dark and put his hand on my hip. “Hey,” he said. “About Monday. Maybe hold off on Janet for a few weeks till you’re feeling better. You’ve been so run down. Big decisions can wait.” “I’m feeling fine,” I said. “I want to do it.” He was quiet for a long time. Then he took his hand away and turned over and he slept with his back to me for the first time in six years.
