Chapter 7 - The Final Dinner at the Table
The house on Elm Street was dark when my father and I pulled up to the curb on Tuesday evening. Only the porch light cast a pale, flickering yellow glow across the overgrown lawn.
My mother answered the door. In just one week, she seemed to have aged ten years. Her hair, usually meticulously styled, was pulled back into a loose, untidy bun. The glittering diamond earrings were gone from her ears, returned to the jeweler under a court order to halt further asset depreciation.
"Grant," she said, her voice lacking its usual sharp authority. She stepped aside to let us into the entryway.
The dining room was exactly as we had left it six days earlier. The mahogany table was bare, the chairs pushed in, except for the single trash can standing by the kitchen door. It had been emptied, but the dark stain from the pot roast was still visible near the rim.
We sat down at the table—my mother at the head, my father and I sitting on opposite sides.
"I asked you here because this madness has to end," my mother began, resting her thin hands on the table. "The court hearing is tomorrow morning. Your brother’s lawyer says he could go to jail, Grant. To jail. Do you have any idea what that would do to our family’s reputation?"
"Darius put himself in this position, Mom," I said, laying the manila folder containing Grandpa’s journal entries flat on the wood between us.
"He made a mistake!" she argued, her voice rising in familiar desperation. "He was young, he was under stress, he was trying to take care of me! You have plenty of money, Grant! You have a good job, a nice house! Why can't you just let the trust absorb the loss? Why do you have to destroy your brother?"
My father leaned forward, setting his palms flat on the table. "Evelyn, stop," he said, his voice steady and cold as steel. "Listen to yourself. He stole sixty-two thousand dollars. He forged his brother's name sixteen times. He was stealing from Maurice's memory."
"Maurice loved Darius!" she yelled, tears welling in her tired eyes. "Maurice would never want to see his grandson in a prison cell!"
"You're wrong, Mom," I said softly.
I opened the manila folder and pulled out the copy of Grandpa's letter, sliding it across the polished mahogany until it rested right beneath her hands.
"Read it," I told her.
She stared down at the paper, her eyes scanning the sharp, familiar handwriting of her late father. As she read, her face drained of what little color remained. Her hands began to shake violently, the paper rattling against the table.
"'A man who doesn't respect the grain will always split the wood,'" she whispered, reading the line aloud, her voice breaking into a ragged sob.
"Grandpa knew what Darius was doing long before he died, Mom," I said, looking her straight in her eyes. "He set up a separate trust for Bug and me because he knew you would cover for Darius until there was nothing left. You didn't protect Darius. You enabled him until he became a criminal."
She dropped the paper onto the table, covering her face with her hands, her shoulders heaving as she cried—not with anger, but with the hollow, crushing realization that her protective lie had completely collapsed.
Suddenly, the front door rattled open.
Darius stepped into the foyer, holding a spare key he wasn't supposed to have. He looked disheveled, his eyes bloodshot, smelling heavily of bourbon.
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"Mom," Darius slurred, stumbling into the dining room. "The lawyer said... he said you were going to fix it. Did he sign the papers? Did Grant drop the charges?"
He looked from my mother’s weeping form to my father’s stony face, and finally to me. The illusion was completely gone.
