“Your father left this house to me.”
“For now,” Tiffany said.
Martha turned to her.
“For as long as I breathe.”
Tiffany’s cheeks flushed.
Marcus looked at the floor.
“Mama, we’re struggling.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t know. You don’t ask.”
“I ask, Marcus. You don’t answer unless you need cash.”
The words landed clean.
Not cruel.
True.
That made them worse.
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“I came here to talk.”
“Then talk to me like I’m your mother,” Martha said. “Not like I’m a bank with a porch.”
Tiffany let out a small laugh.
Martha looked at her.
“And you,” Martha said gently, “do not get to stand in my living room and measure my life like furniture.”
Tiffany’s face hardened.
“I’m trying to protect my husband.”
“From what?”
“From being cut out.”
Martha’s voice dropped.
“Cut out of what? My grief? My grocery money? My old roof? The chair your father died in?”
Marcus flinched.
Martha saw it.
Her voice softened.
“Baby, if you needed me, you could have come to me.”
“I did come.”
“You came angry.”
He had no answer.
Tiffany walked to the mantel and picked up the framed wedding photo of Martha and Samuel.
“This is what she does,” Tiffany said, looking at Marcus. “She makes everything sacred so nobody can question her.”
Martha stepped forward.
“Put that down.”
Tiffany did, but carelessly.
The frame tipped and slid against the mantel. It did not fall, but the sound made Martha gasp.
Marcus reached out without thinking and steadied it.
For one second, his hand rested over his father’s face in the photo.
He saw Samuel’s smile.
He saw Martha in white, young and bright-eyed.
He saw himself at ten years old, standing outside that same church, holding a bag of rice and laughing because Samuel had winked at him during the vows renewal.
The memory hit him so hard he almost sat down.
Tiffany did not notice.
“We should see the papers,” she said. “The deed. The insurance records. Whatever these people had you sign.”
Martha stared.
“Had me sign?”
Marcus looked up.
“Mama, did you sign anything?”
“No.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing but a thank-you card to a baby.”
Tiffany’s lips thinned.
“Then prove it.”
Martha looked at her son.
Not Tiffany.
Marcus.
The boy she had fed.
The boy she had held through storms.
The man standing in her living room asking her to prove she had not been tricked by people who had treated her with more care than he had.
She turned and walked to the cedar box by Samuel’s picture.
Marcus stiffened.
“Mama—”
She opened it.
Inside were not stacks of money.
Not jewelry.
Not secret papers.
Just yellow baby booties.
A hospital bracelet.
A tiny cap.
A folded photograph of Marcus holding his newborn son, face wet with tears and wonder.
Martha lifted the booties.
“This is what I keep in here,” she said.
Marcus looked like the floor had moved under him.
Tiffany said nothing.
Martha held up the photograph.
“And this.”
Marcus stared at the younger version of himself.
He remembered the weight of that baby.
His son.
Three days.
He remembered Martha sitting beside the hospital bed, humming under her breath while everyone else forgot how to speak.
He remembered Samuel standing in the hallway, one hand on the wall, trying to be strong enough for all of them.
He remembered leaving the hospital empty-handed and deciding, somewhere in the dark part of his mind, never to need anybody that much again.
“Mama,” he whispered.
Martha put the photo back.
“I kept a little of the money they gave me for repairs. The rest went to a children’s home outside town. They needed heat. Babies needed formula. Kids needed winter coats.”
Tiffany’s head snapped up.
“You gave it away?”
Martha closed the cedar box.
“Yes.”
Marcus let out a breath.
Tiffany looked at him, furious.
“Do you hear that? She gave away money while we’re drowning.”
Martha turned.
