Chapter 1 - The Pot on My Birthday
The stainless-steel pot hit the mattress hard enough to bounce against my thigh.
I jerked upright.
Theresa stood beside my bed in a burgundy robe, one hand still extended from the throw.
“Birthdays don’t excuse laziness.”
For a second, I thought I had dreamed it.
Morning light streamed through the windows of our condo in Chicago’s South Loop. The digital clock read 7:06.
My thirty-second birthday.
I had gone to bed after midnight because I had spent most of the previous evening finishing quarterly reports for the architecture firm where I worked as a project accountant.
Mitchell had texted that a client dinner was running late.
He never came home.
Theresa apparently considered that my failure.
“Get up.”
“Get out of my bedroom.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Cook for my son.”
She grabbed my blanket with both hands and yanked.
I slid toward the edge of the mattress before catching myself against the headboard.
“Theresa!”
“He works twelve-hour days while you lie around like a princess.”
I stared at her.
Mitchell sold commercial insurance.
He left most mornings at eight-thirty.
He had spent the previous month complaining that December was his slow season.
But facts had never survived long around his mother.
Theresa had been staying with us for what was supposed to be three weeks after a minor plumbing leak damaged her Evanston townhouse.
That had been four months ago.
Every time I asked when the repairs would be finished, Mitchell said she needed us.
Every time I objected to her rearranging cabinets, criticizing my clothes, opening our mail, or entering our bedroom without knocking, he called me impatient.
I had become very good at being patient.
That morning I stopped.
Theresa reached for my arm.
I caught her wrist.
“Don’t touch me again.”
She looked genuinely offended.
Then someone moved in the doorway.
Mitchell.
Light-blue shirt.
Dark trousers.
No coat.
No overnight bag.
He looked like a man returning from somewhere he had been comfortable.
“Mitchell?”
He froze.
Then the smell reached me.
Perfume.
Not mine.
Something floral and expensive that I had smelled before on the collar of his winter coat.
Theresa looked at him.
Not with surprise.
With irritation.
As if his timing was inconvenient.
That mattered more than the perfume.
I let go of her wrist.
“He was with her.”
Mitchell went still.
Theresa didn’t ask who.
I looked from one to the other.
“You already knew.”
Mitchell exhaled.
“Danielle—”
I opened my bedside drawer.
Inside were three bank statements and a sealed letter I had collected two days earlier.
Mitchell’s eyes found the envelope.
His arrogance disappeared.
Theresa’s face lost color.
“What is that?” Mitchell asked.
I pulled the letter halfway out.
He whispered, “Mom already knew.”
I stared at both of them.
Then I understood something I should have understood months earlier.
May you like
Theresa had not been living in our home because her townhouse needed repairs.
She had been there to keep an eye on me.
