“That is not what I asked.”
“You know how Denise is. She makes everything sound worse.”
“Did you tell her Mom would be at Fairview by Christmas?”
Bridget looked at me, and then at him. She did not say yes. She did not say no.
That was enough for me.
I opened the folder. I did not try to read the pages. I knew better than to pretend I could. But I saw the name Fairview printed on the top sheet, along with the documents Bridget had called Medicare forms.
Curtis took one step toward me.
“Mom, let me see that.”
“Rosalind will read it.”
“Who is Rosalind?”
“You have met her.”
“The bridge lady?”
“She is the person who reads my mail.”
Bridget shook her head. “This is ridiculous. She is filling your head with suspicion.”
“No,” I said. “You filled my house with papers and expected me not to understand them.”
Curtis looked at the silver chest. “Why is that in the car?”
Bridget answered too quickly. “I was moving things out of the way.”
“Out of the way for what?”
She looked at him with an expression I had seen many times over the past year, the one that meant she expected him to take her side without needing the whole story.
“Curtis, I have been doing everything here.”
“I know you help Mom.”
“That is not what she thinks.”
“I did not say that.”
“You do not have to. She changed the locks.”
I kept my voice steady. “I changed them because I heard you planning to put me in Fairview and take the house.”
“No one was taking the house,” Curtis said.
“Then you were not supposed to sign anything.”
He looked down.
That was the first answer I got from him.
I had spent six months refusing to sign papers I could not read. He had been scheduled to sign the last one because Bridget told him it was necessary. Whether he understood the document or not, he had agreed to put his name on it. I did not need to guess at his intentions to know I could not let that happen.
“I am not signing anything,” he said.
Bridget turned toward him. “You do not know what you are saying.”
“I know I am not signing something I have not read.”
“You have read it.”
“Not with Mom.”
“You said you trusted me.”
“I said I trusted you to help her. I did not say you could decide where she lives.”
The driveway went quiet.
I was nervous to admit this, even to the people who know me: part of me still wanted Curtis to come home and be my son before he was Bridget’s husband. I wanted him to be angry for me without needing to be convinced. Instead, he looked tired and uncertain, which was not the same thing, but it was at least honest.
Bridget reached for the folder again.
“I am keeping this,” I said.
“You cannot keep my paperwork.”
“It has my name on it.”
“It is for your benefit.”
“Then Rosalind can read it to me.”
Curtis turned to Bridget. “Give her the rest of her things from the car.”
“I am not unpacking her entire house in the driveway.”