Since my father’s funeral, I had paid the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance, the electric bill, the water bill, the furnace repair, and the plumber when the upstairs bathroom backed up in November.
My mother called it mooching.
Kendra called it squatting.
I called it keeping the house from falling apart while they discussed my life like it was an inconvenience attached to an address.
“Did you hear me?” my mother asked.
I looked at her then.
Her hair had been freshly colored. Her lipstick was perfect. She wore the navy cardigan she always put on when she wanted to look respectable in conflict, like cloth alone could turn meanness into authority. She had not looked that put together in the last six months when I was the one sorting out insurance forms and signing hospice papers and sleeping on the den sofa so Dad wouldn’t be alone at night after his breathing changed.
“Yes,” I said. “I heard you.”
Kendra stepped forward just enough to make the diamonds in her ears catch the light. “We’re trying to make this easier, Ava.”
That was my sister. Always performing concern just loudly enough for witnesses.
