A few days shy of her eighteenth birthday, she gave birth to my mother in a women’s free clinic in Pelville, the town where I was subsequently raised. She did it under Tilly Taylor, an alias she made up on the spot. Ashamed of having been jilted by both her family and the baby’s father, she continued using her assumed identity after leaving the hospital, later having her name changed legally. She told everyone she met that she’d been orphaned as a young girl, and that her husband had been killed while serving in the military. She told the lies so often and so convincingly that she eventually started to believe them herself.
She worked as a cleaner, learning how to scrub floors, change bedding, and polish furniture—chores she hadn’t done once in her whole life as the daughter of millionaires. Despite doing backbreaking labor for minimum wage, she was thrilled to be liberated from her cold parents’ suffocating oppression.That’s what she’d said, anyway, on the rare occasions she opened up to me about her past.
Feeling defensive on behalf of Tilly, I said, “Are you aware your daughter haspassed away?” To twist the knife, I added, “Your granddaughter, too.”
“We know,” the man said, showing all the emotion of a snail.
Now, I was good and pissed off. I hadn’t expected sobbing from these robots, but even a modicum of remorse would have been appreciated.
“Where were you all these years?” I demanded, rage simmering up from my gut and straining my voice. “Do you have any idea how hard life was for your daughter? For your granddaughter? For me? You left Tilly high and dry—tossedyour own daughterout of the house into the freezing cold when she was pregnant! And why? Because you couldn’t stand to lose face with your friends!”
“That’s part of the reason why we’ve come here,” the man said. “We’d like to explain.”
“You can explain all you want, but there’s no way you’ll ever be able to justify doing that to your own flesh and blood! At least not to me.” I clamped my hands down on the arms of my chair to regain composure.
My great-grandparents didn’t flinch at my outburst. They didn’t even blink. It seemed they’d come expecting my reaction. Good thing they remained silent, because I was far from done.
“You two clearly have lots of money. Butus—do you know how tough it was financially? How much we scraped and scrounged to get by? Did you know that my mother—yourgranddaughter—was killed by a drunk driver when I was just a kid?” I neglected to mention that the drunk driver was my father, who’d driven them home from a bar after they’d consumed over a dozen beers each. “It wasyour daughterwho stepped up and raised me. Despite your upbringing, Tilly was the most decentand honorable person I’ve ever known. So, if you think you can just show up here and buy my forgiveness with your blood money, you have another thing coming. I’ll give you the million dollars back, if that’s the case.”
I really hoped I wouldn’t have to reimburse them, but damn if I didn’t mean it. Screw them and the luxury car they rode in on.
The man, whose name I still didn’t know, took a sip of his tea. I was so furious that I wanted to snatch it from his pruned hand.Stop drinking my chamomile, asshole!
“You’re well within your rights to be angry, Olivia,” said the woman. “We certainly could have handled the situation with Greta better. Perhaps you’ll consider forgiving us once you hear the entire story.”
I was confused. “Greta?”
“Your grandmother—our daughter.”
“Oh, right.” I’d only ever known her as Tilly. “And what areyournames?”
“Greta didn’t tell you?” the man asked.
“I never bothered asking,” I sniped.
“Fair enough.” The woman’s tiny, bejeweled hand fluttered up to her breast. “I am Maxine.”
The man smiled. Sort of. “And I am Richard.”
“And what are your last names? I’m assuming not Taylor?”
Maxine said, “My maiden name is Bowden. I became Nolan after Richard and I married.”
“Richard and Maxine Nolan,” I muttered. I could have been Olivia Nolan.What a trip.
“Can we come to an agreement?” Maxine asked. “Let us stay long enough to explain ourselves. If you still want us to go after we’ve finished, we promise we’ll leave. The money is yours to keep regardless.”
“It’s not about the money,” I said, and it wasn’t. It was aboutthe way they’d treated three generations of women. Like we were insignificant, unworthy of their love—though it was debatable that Mr. and Mrs. Nolan even knew what love was.
Nevertheless, I knew very little about my roots beyond what Tilly had told me. I hadn’t cared so much when I was a teenager, but now that I was a little older I felt that knowingsomething about my ancestry was important.
I sat back in my chair. “Fine, I’ll hear you out.” But it had better be good.
“Splendid,” Richard and Maxine said in harmony, their jaws jutting out slightly. They reminded me a great deal of Leopold. He was a posh snob, too.
Maxine nodded at her husband, and he began, “I wasn’t born wealthy, Olivia. My family was terribly poor. My father was a humble shop owner in New York City, and I was one of five children.”
Ironic, then, that you’d go out of your way to ensure your daughter lived in poverty, I thought.
