“Taio,” she says finally. “I can’t take that.”
“Mrs. Carrington?—”
“Anne. Please.”
“Anne.” I push the check closer to her. “This is yours. It was stolen; I’m returning it.”
“Your father stole it,” she interrupts gently. “Not you.”
“I benefited from it. Every year of my life, everything I had—it was paid for with money he took from families like yours.”
She shakes her head. “Honey. This has to stop. You dad has a hold on you like…” She exhales deeply. Scooting the check aside, she grabs both of my hands and squeezes tightly. “You are a separate person than your father. You don’t even look like him. You are your mother, hair to toes. You’re a good man. Stop livingyour life like a conman. Just because you were raised by one, doesn’t make you one.” She grabs the check and rips it in half. “I love you, Taio. Like my own son.This must stop.”
I inhale and exhale slowly to control the pressure of emotions. “I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend. I’m asking you to let go.”
The words hit harder than I expected. I stare at the torn check on the table, at the money that suddenly feels less like restitution and more like a weight I’ve been carrying for no reason. “How?” I ask. “Tell me how.”
“I wish I knew. I think it starts by letting go of the undeserved guilt. You want to know something funny?” Anne’s voice softens. “When the truth came out about your dad, I thought everything was over. Richard had to go back to work after early retirement. We lost most of our savings. The extravagance that I felt we’d earned disappeared overnight. I spent months so angry I could barely function.”
“You had every right to be angry.”
“I did. But here’s the thing.” She leans forward, her eyes meeting mine with a glowing intensity. “The money being gone? It changed us. For the better.”
I blink. “It did?”
“We couldn’t make back what we lost, and money just became less important. Richard’s home now. Really home, not just passing through between business trips. He’s at every single one of Joy’s volleyball games. We have dinner together every night. We talk.” A small smile crosses her face. “We’d forgotten how to do that. Somewhere in the years of chasing more—more money, more status, more stuff—we’d lost each other. Losing the money forced us to find each other again.”
“That’s…not what I expected you to say.”
“Life rarely goes the way we expect.” She takes another sip of coffee. “Joy’s decided to take a gap year, by the way. We sat downand talked about it. She’s going to intern at a nonprofit here in the city, then attend a state school. Not because she has to—she got into NYU, you know. But because she wants to stay close. Because for the first time in years, her family feels like a family.”
I don’t know what to say. I came here expecting to hand over money and leave with my guilt slightly lighter. Instead, Anne is telling me that my father’s theft somehow improved her life.
“I’m not saying what James did was okay,” Anne adds, reading my expression. “It wasn’t. He hurt a lot of people, and he deserves to be in prison. But I’ve made my peace with it. I’ve moved on. And I found the silver lining.” She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine one more time. “You need to do the same.”
“I want to. But I don’t know where to start.”
“You start by putting that money back in your pocket. Metaphorically, of course. I sincerely hope that wasn’t a cashier’s check. In which case I’ll fetch you some tape.”
I laugh. “No, it wasn’t.”
The oven timer dings demandingly. Anne leaps up from the table, summoned to her baked goods. She pulls a square pan out of the oven and my head goes hazy with the rich aroma of cinnamon and butter and sugar. The last thing I ate was a slice of pizza at Charlie’s pool party. I’m ravenous now.
Anne flips the pan, the square cake staying perfectly intact on the cutting board. She cuts a generous slice and serves me on a small white plate.
“I was supposed to let this cool, but I can hear your stomach growling, kid.”
“Guilty,” I admit.
She scuttles back to the kitchen drawers and rejoins me with a fork. Holding it out, she says, “You don’t have to have all the steps. Just one at a time. First, you eat this delicious coffee cake I made from scratch, thank you very much. Second, you startthinking about what you want. Not what your dad wants. He got the prison sentence, not you, Taio. You’re free. So go live your life. Not the life you think you owe people. The life you actually want.”
What’s the life I want? I’m not sure. But I know who I want in it.
I sink my fork into the corner of the coffee cake, watching as the crumb gives way under the tines. It’s still steaming. I blow on the bite, then let it dissolve on my tongue. It’s so good I almost want to cry. Anne is humming as she slices the rest of the pan, a motherly melody that I remember from sleepovers and finals week cramming. While she’s distracted at the counter, I slip out my phone and pull up my texts with Charlie. I’m surprised to see a message from her—four hours ago. Somehow I missed it in the chaotic trance of late-night travel.
Charlie
