Chapter 2 - “I wanted her to earn the position normally.”
“You interfered.”
“I told Mrs. Alvarez to evaluate Clara exactly as she would anyone else.”
“That is still interference.”
“Yes,” Mother said. “I gave her a name. Your managers regularly receive names.”
I had no answer to that.
Because she was right.
Recommendations were how half the world worked.
Clara had still interviewed.
Still passed the background check.
Still done the job.
“You could have told me after you were hired.”
Clara met my eyes.
“And what would you have thought?”
I almost answered.
Then stopped.
Because I knew.
I would have assumed she wanted access.
Influence.
Money.
Something.
Clara seemed to read the answer anyway.
“That’s why,” she said.
The office became quiet again.
Mother broke the silence.
“Now perhaps you understand why I trust her.”
I folded Margaret’s letter carefully.
“I understand why you knew her.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Mother reached toward me.
I gave the letter back.
She took it.
“Trust came later,” she said. “When she was here at two in the morning because I was afraid to sleep. When she learned which music I liked because she noticed I stopped clenching my hands when it played. When she sat through three terrible old movies without telling me they were terrible.”
“They were terrible,” Clara said.
Mother looked offended.
“They were classics.”
“One had a cardboard moon.”
“It was 1948.”
“That doesn’t make the moon less cardboard.”
Mother laughed.
Again.
That real laugh.
I watched her.
For months, I had been asking doctors how many months she might have left.
I had not asked my mother what she wanted those months to feel like.
The realization made me deeply uncomfortable.
So naturally, I changed the subject.
“What course are you taking?”
Clara blinked.
“Excuse me?”
“You said community college.”
“Gerontology support and patient care.”
“How far along?”
“Almost finished with the certificate.”
Mother smiled.
“She’ll finish in December.”
“You know her schedule?”
“Of course.”
Something about that embarrassed me.
Not because Mother knew.
Because I didn’t.
I employed more than ninety people directly across my homes and private office staff.
Thousands through companies.
I knew compensation tables.
Retention percentages.
Department structures.
Yet I had no idea that the woman who cleaned the east wing in my house attended classes three evenings a week.
I looked toward Clara.
“What happens after December?”
“I’m applying to assisted-living centers.”
Mother’s smile disappeared.
“You are not leaving in December.”
Clara laughed.
“We have discussed this.”
“And I rejected your plan.”
“You don’t actually get to reject it.”
“I’m eighty-one and ill. I get certain privileges.”
“You get extra blankets and control of the television.”
“Heartless girl.”
It was absurdly ordinary.
And somehow that was what moved me most.
Mother had become “the patient” in my mind.
Clara still treated her like a person.
A difficult, opinionated, occasionally unreasonable person.
My mother.
I stood.
“I need some air.”
Mother nodded.
She understood that sentence too well.
I left them in the office and walked through the rear garden.
The Hale estate covered almost forty acres, though most of it was woodland.
My grandfather had bought the property in 1962.
My father expanded the house.
I renovated it.
Every generation had added something.
A library.
A conservatory.
A guest wing.
A pool no one used.
We had spent decades enlarging the place.
I suddenly wondered whether any of us had become better at living inside it.
Near the greenhouse, I found our gardener, Samuel Ortiz, tying back late-season roses.
Samuel had worked for my mother for twenty-nine years.
“Mr. Hale.”
“Samuel.”
He studied me.
Employees often tried not to study me openly.
Samuel had stopped caring about that sometime around my fortieth birthday.
“You look troubled.”
“I’ve been informed I know nothing about my own household.”
Samuel returned to the roses.
“That happens to people with offices.”
I stared at him.
“Was that a joke?”
“Possibly.”
I nearly smiled.
Then I asked, “Did you know Clara’s mother?”
He paused.
“Margaret Reed?”
“Yes.”
“A long time ago.”
“Everyone knew except me?”
Samuel shrugged.
“You were a boy then.”
“I’m beginning to realize people remember me being a boy far longer than I do.”
“That’s because you stopped allowing it.”
I looked toward the house.
“Was Margaret important to my mother?”
“Very.”
“Did she really help save the company?”
Samuel thought about it.
“I don’t know about companies. I know your mother barely ate after your father died, and Margaret brought lunch into her office every afternoon and refused to leave until half the plate was gone.”
That was not the answer I expected.
It was probably the answer I needed.
“You like Clara?”
Samuel smiled.
“Everyone likes Clara.”
“That sounds statistically unlikely.”
“Fine. Mr. Donnelly dislikes her.”
“Who is Mr. Donnelly?”
“The cat.”
“We don’t have a cat.”
“He belongs to the neighbors. He believes he owns the greenhouse.”
I looked through the glass.
A large orange cat sat proudly on a potting bench.
For the first time that day, I laughed.
Samuel nodded approvingly.
“There. Better.”
I walked back toward the house more slowly.
That afternoon, instead of returning to the city, I canceled two meetings.
My assistant, Jonathan Pierce, called immediately.
“You canceled the Armitage meeting.”
“Yes.”
“You never cancel Armitage.”
“I just did.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Is your mother all right?”
That question stopped me.
Jonathan knew me well.
Perhaps better than most.
“She’s having a difficult week.”
“I’ll move tomorrow morning too.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You were going to.”
He hung up before I could object.
I spent the rest of the afternoon at home.
At first, I had no idea what to do.
That was humiliating.
I could enter a negotiation involving three multinational companies and understand my role within minutes.
But sitting with my mother?
I felt like a guest.
At four, I found her in the sunroom with Clara.
A half-finished puzzle covered the table.
Mother looked up.
“Did your office burn down?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I live here.”
“You sleep here occasionally. That isn’t the same thing.”
Clara hid a smile.
I sat.
“What are you doing?”
“A puzzle,” Mother said.
“I can see that.”
“Excellent. Your education wasn’t wasted.”
I looked at the box.
A painting of Venice.
One thousand pieces.
“How long have you been working on this?”
“Three weeks.”
“It shouldn’t take three weeks.”
Mother narrowed her eyes.
Clara whispered, “You have made a serious mistake.”
“What?”
Mother pushed a pile of pieces toward me.
“Then help.”
I stayed for two hours.
We completed approximately seven inches of sky.
Mother accused me of sorting pieces too aggressively.
Clara accused both of us of cheating after we looked at the box lid too often.
At dinner, Mother ate more than usual.
Afterward, Clara left for class.
I found myself asking what subject she had that night.
“Communication in end-of-life care,” Mother said.
The phrase silenced me.
Mother noticed.
“It is not an insult to admit I’m dying.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
I looked away.
She reached across the table.
“Bennett.”
“I’m trying.”
Her fingers covered mine.
“I know.”
That was the first time either of us had said it.
Not that she was dying.
We had said that.
Not that I loved her.
We had always said that too.
But that I was trying.
That she knew.
Something inside me loosened.
Over the next week, I changed my schedule.
Not dramatically.
I still worked.
I still took calls.
I still left for meetings.
But I began having breakfast with Mother.
At first, she seemed suspicious.
On the third morning, she said, “If you are doing this because you feel guilty, you may stop.”
“I’m doing it because apparently I’ve been informed breakfast exists.”
She smiled.
May you like
“Progress.”
I also began noticing Clara.
