Chapter 2 - What the Flowers Heard
The recording had begun before lunch.
I had placed the device beneath the flowerpot, then gone into the kitchen to help Alexander carry plates. Bianca and her parents stayed behind in the dining room.
Their voices sounded perfectly ordinary.
That made them worse.
“Keep your voice down,” Bianca said through the tiny speaker.
Ewald answered, “I need a date.”
“You’ll have the papers next week. Alexander thinks we’re arranging support so she can stay independent.”
Lydia laughed softly.
“Independent people don’t need their sons paying their bills.”
I stopped the recording.
Alexander stared at me.
“I never paid your bills.”
“I know.”
He had offered when I retired. I thanked him and declined. My pension covered my needs, and I still kept a little money from mending clothes for neighbors.
Bianca lifted her chin.
“You sent her money at Christmas.”
“A Christmas present.”
“You were always worrying about her!”
“That doesn’t make her dependent.”
I pressed play again.
“Your husband won’t agree to a sale,” Ewald said.
“He will if he believes she’s declining.”
The room became very quiet.
On the recording, Lydia asked whether Alexander had noticed anything.
“I’ve been telling him about the confusion,” Bianca replied. “The missed appointments. The strange accusations.”
I remembered an appointment Bianca had canceled without telling me.
I remembered waiting at a restaurant where nobody arrived.
I remembered Alexander asking whether I had forgotten his birthday dinner, although my invitation listed the following evening.
For months I had wondered whether age was finally making a fool of me.
Now the answer sat three feet away, wearing pearl earrings.
Alexander lowered himself into a chair.
“You changed the dinner date.”
Bianca shook her head.
“I made a mistake.”
“You told me she refused to come.”
“She was being difficult.”
I continued the recording.
Ewald cleared his throat.
“The bridge loan is due in July. If the apartment sells close to valuation, we can clear the debt and still have enough to restart.”
“How much of it?” Lydia asked.
“Most.”
Bianca sounded irritated.
“I’m not doing this so you can gamble it away again.”
“Business involves risk.”
“Then take risks with your own property.”
“My property is already pledged.”
There was a scrape of a chair.
Then Bianca said the sentence that would follow my son into every quiet room for months.
“Helga doesn’t need to know where the money goes. By the time she realizes, she’ll be settled somewhere.”
I switched the recorder off.
Outside, a lawn mower hummed.
Somewhere nearby, a child shouted for his mother.
Alexander looked at Bianca as though she had disappeared and left someone else standing in her clothes.
“Settled where?”
“Alex—”
“Where?”
Lydia answered.
“A very respectable residence. We only wanted to discuss possibilities.”
“With whose permission?”
“She’s seventy-two,” Ewald snapped. “Do you think she’s going to live there forever?”
Alexander stood so suddenly his chair scraped the floor.
I caught his wrist.
“Don’t.”
His hand trembled under mine.
Ewald stepped backward anyway.
Bianca began crying.
I had seen those tears before. They came quickly whenever consequences entered a room.
“My parents were in trouble,” she said. “You don’t know what that feels like.”
Alexander looked down at me.
At my yellow dress.
At the scratched fingers holding the recorder.
“I think I’m learning.”
He asked them to leave.
Bianca refused at first. It was her house too, she said, and he could not throw her out.
“I’m asking for space,” he answered. “Your parents leave now. You can stay, but this conversation is over until we’ve spoken to separate lawyers.”
That finally silenced her.
Ewald left without apologizing.
Lydia paused at the door.
“You have destroyed a family over money.”
I met her eyes.
“No. I discovered what you were willing to do for it.”
After they left, Alexander sat beside me, his elbows on his knees.
“I’m sorry.”
I wanted those words to fix everything.
They did not.
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
May you like
The caller introduced herself as an employee of my bank.
“Mrs. Morgen, we need to verify a loan application submitted in your name.”
