Chapter 7
Denise came over that evening.
She carried a folder and looked so nervous that I almost felt sorry for her. Dad asked her to sit at the kitchen table. I stayed beside him.
“I helped Tara move the boxes,” Denise said.
“When?” I asked.
“Last spring. She told me you’d chosen what you wanted to keep.”
“I hadn’t seen any of it.”
Denise nodded.
“I understand that now.”
She opened the folder. Inside were photographs she had taken while packing, mostly so she could remember which boxes held fragile things. One showed Mom’s desk in the garage. Another showed Tara carrying a box labeled SKETCHBOOKS.
“Why did you say you thought I knew?” I asked.
“Because Tara told me you visited the unit with her afterward.”
I felt Dad tense beside me.
“She never took me there.”
“I believe you.”
Denise pointed to an email Tara had sent her two months later, thanking her for helping “Maya sort through the last of Claire’s belongings.”
I had been at school on the day the email was sent.
Denise rubbed her forehead.
“I should have spoken to you myself.”
“You couldn’t have known she was lying about all of it,” I said.
“I could have asked.”
I appreciated that she didn’t make excuses.
Dad asked whether anything else had been taken from the house.
Denise hesitated.
“Tara sold a dining cabinet that belonged to her before the marriage. I helped her arrange the pickup. I don’t know about anything of Claire’s.”
She offered us the photographs and copies of the emails. Dad thanked her.
At the door, Denise turned to me.
“I’m sorry I helped her do this.”
“You told us the truth now,” I said.
After she left, Dad placed the folder beside Mom’s letter. I could see how much it hurt him to learn another version of the story Tara had told.
That night, he called her.
I heard only his side from the living room.
“Denise told us.”
“No, Maya never went there.”
“You used her name to make it sound as though you had permission.”
He paused.
“I don’t know how to trust what you say right now.”
A few minutes later, he came in and sat down.
“Tara admits she lied to Denise,” he said. “She says she was ashamed and kept inventing explanations instead of giving the things back.”
“Does she understand why she wanted them gone in the first place?”
“She says she’s working on that in counseling.”
I looked at the folder.
“Are you angry with me for wanting her to stay away?”
“No.”
“Even if you decide to stay married?”
“Whatever I decide, I won’t ask you to live with someone you feel unsafe around.”
I needed to hear that clearly.
The next week, Tara asked Dad whether she could send me a second letter. I said she could, as long as I wasn’t expected to answer it.
This one was shorter.
She wrote that Mom’s belongings had made her jealous because Dad and I shared memories she could never enter. She said she had been wrong to remove them and worse to lie afterward. She wrote that she understood an apology did not restore my trust.
I believed she meant those words when she wrote them.
I still put the letter in a drawer and went to Elena’s house.
As summer approached, I prepared for the art program. Dad helped me buy a suitcase. We practiced the bus route between the student residence and the studio, even though I would be traveling with a group.
One night, while I packed, he asked whether I was excited.
“Very. And I’m scared.”
“Both make sense.”
“I’ve never been away that long.”
“We can call. I can visit on the family weekend.”
“What if I want to come home early?”
“Then we’ll talk. You don’t have to decide your whole summer tonight.”
I remembered Mom’s letter and smiled.
At the program’s welcome meeting, I met students from several schools. A girl named Priya admired the drawing on the cover of my sketchbook and asked whether I wanted to sit with her.
I said yes before I could worry about whether she meant it.
Dad watched from across the room. He gave me a small wave, then let me join her.
On the drive home, I told him about the studio and the instructors. He listened to every detail.
When we pulled into the driveway, Tara’s car was parked across the street.
Dad stopped the car.
“I asked her not to come by without arranging it,” he said.
Tara got out holding a cardboard tube.
May you like
She walked toward us but stopped several steps from my door.
“I found one of Claire’s drawings,” she said. “It was behind the lining of a box.”
