Chapter 6 - The People Who Stopped Believing Him
Laura did not forgive Evelyn quickly.
Sienna was glad she didn't.
Easy forgiveness would have let everybody pretend silence had been harmless.
Instead, Laura listened while Evelyn explained the laundry-room incident and Mark's earlier promise.
Then she said, “You should have called me.”
Evelyn nodded.
“I should have.”
“I could have taken him out.”
“Yes.”
“I trusted you.”
“I know.”
Laura's eyes filled.
“That's worse.”
Evelyn looked down.
“Yes.”
Nothing about the exchange was dramatic.
Nobody shouted.
That made it harder to watch.
For the next week, Noah remained with Laura at her sister's house.
Evelyn visited only when invited.
Sienna began applying for bookkeeping jobs.
Her father didn't call again.
Instead, a certified letter arrived from Mercer Home Renovation confirming that her employment had ended for “unauthorized disclosure of private company and family information.”
She laughed when she read it.
Then she cried in her kitchen because losing a job and losing a father could apparently happen on the same sheet of paper.
Her attorney advised her not to contact Trina.
Trina had told investigators that Sienna's strike with the extinguisher had been unprovoked.
Evelyn contradicted her.
So did Sienna.
The physical layout of the room supported parts of their accounts, but nobody promised Sienna the matter would disappear simply because she believed she'd acted to protect others.
That frightened her.
She let herself be frightened.
Then she kept cooperating anyway.
The larger change happened inside Evelyn.
For sixty-seven years, she had treated family disputes as things to soften.
She'd translated Mark's anger into stress.
His selfishness into fear.
His lies into poor judgment.
Now she stopped translating.
During her second DCFS interview, she described the laundry-room incident.
She described Mark asking her not to tell Laura.
She described the back-door latch.
She described Mark saying, “She only had him in there for a second.”
When Mark learned she'd done that, he called his mother.
Sienna was beside her when the phone rang.
Evelyn answered.
Mark spoke loudly enough that Sienna could hear pieces.
“You're helping them take my son.”
Evelyn said nothing.
“You know Laura wants me out of his life.”
Still nothing.
“Mom.”
Evelyn finally spoke.
“You keep saying people are taking things from you.”
Mark went quiet.
“You never say what Noah needs.”
He hung up.
Evelyn lowered the phone.
Sienna expected her to cry.
Instead she walked into the kitchen and started making coffee.
“Grandma?”
“Hmm?”
“You okay?”
“No.”
She measured the grounds.
“But I'm done helping him confuse that with being wrong.”
It was the first time Sienna understood that Mark's power in the family had never come entirely from his temper.
It had come from everybody else's fear of losing him.
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Now that fear was beginning to lose its grip.
And Mark knew it.
