I thought I was being thoughtful.
Richard had been tense for weeks, rubbing his neck, snapping over payroll questions, and blaming drivers, vendors, and the weather for his own poor decisions. I thought walking in early with dinner, patience, and a quiet evening might soften the cold distance that had grown between us.
I had even bought a small lavender candle for my younger sister, Glenda, who had been living on our guest-room couch for three months following another disastrous breakup, because I kept stupidly believing that this time she would actually try to get her life together.
Then there was Grandma Betty.
For the past year, Richard and his insufferable mother, Doris, had been loudly insisting that ninety-two-year-old Betty was slipping into severe cognitive decline. They called her confused, fragile, and in desperate need of constant, overwhelming supervision. But what they called supervision mostly consisted of forcing her onto the living room sofa under a heavy wool blanket, talking over her as if she were already dead, and giving her mild sedatives prescribed by a shady family doctor whenever she dared to ask uncomfortable questions about her late husband’s estate.
When I pulled into the driveway that night, the wet gravel crunched loudly beneath my tires.
The house was completely dark. Not a single light glowed from the windows, and the garage door was shut tight, looking like an abandoned fortress holding its breath in the rain.
I ran through the downpour, dropped my heavy laptop bag twice on the porch, and finally worked my key into the lock with numb, trembling fingers. The second I stepped inside, a cold, drafty chill rolled across my face; someone had turned the central thermostat down to sixty degrees.
