PART 2
Brenda looked at me, blinked twice, and forced a tight, dramatic smile.
“Look at you,” she said, leaning in like she was going to hug me.
I stepped back half a foot and kept my hand firmly on the edge of the storm door. I didn’t invite her in. Twenty-one years of silence build a wall that a sudden knock cannot knock down.
“What are you doing here, Brenda?” I asked.
Her face tightened at the sound of her first name, but she quickly recovered, pressing a hand to her chest. “I heard about my mother. I came as soon as I could. A neighbor of hers, Mrs. Gable, tracked down my number on the internet. It is a terrible loss. Just terrible.”
She didn’t sound like someone who had lost a mother. She sounded like someone practicing an excuse.
“Grandma passed three weeks ago,” I said. “The service was ten days ago. Mrs. Gable said she reached you before the funeral.”
Brenda let out a heavy sigh and waved a hand, trying to brush the timeline away. “Traveling isn’t easy for me right now. I had loose ends to tie up. But I’m here now. Let me come inside so we can talk about how we’re going to handle everything. I’m exhausted from the bus ride.”
She reached down to grab the handle of her suitcase, expecting me to swing the door wide open.
“We can talk right here on the porch,” I told her.
Brenda stopped, her fingers curled around the luggage handle. The polite mask began to slip. “Excuse me? I am your mother, and this is my mother’s house. I have a right to sit down in my family home.”
“You haven’t set foot on this porch in over twenty years,” I replied evenly. “You didn’t help pay for her medicine. You didn’t visit when she broke her hip four years ago. You didn’t even send flowers. What do you want?”
Brenda crossed her arms, looking past me into the hallway. “I want what is reasonable. Mom is gone, which means her estate needs to be settled. As her only surviving child, the house naturally comes to me. I know you’ve been living here, and I’m willing to let you stay in your old room for a few weeks while you find an apartment, but I need to move in. I have had a very difficult year.”
I looked at her luggage and the worn-out heels of her shoes. “Where is your husband? Where is Julian?”
Brenda looked away, her jaw clenching. “My husband walked out three years ago. And Julian… Julian is busy living his own life out west. He doesn’t have time to manage an older mother.”
The truth slipped out before she could stop it. The golden boy she poured every bit of her love, money, and attention into had abandoned her the second she ran out of cash to bail him out. Brenda had nowhere left to go, no savings, and no pride. She had come to claim the house Grandma built, fully expecting me to step aside or become her live-in caretaker.
