“That’s so generous, Mom,” Randall said. “Nova’s going to be thrilled.”
I bet she was.
Friday afternoon, the Fourth of July weekend, I sat in a hotel room three blocks away with Margaret and a laptop.
At 2:47 p.m., four SUVs and a massive RV pulled into my driveway.
They parked on my lawn. On my grass. One of the SUVs ran over the edge of my rose bed. I watched a pink rosebush disappear under a tire.
Nova stepped out first. White linen pants. A flowing blue top. Big sunglasses. She stood on my driveway with her hands on her hips and looked up at my house like she was appraising it.
Randall followed. In a polo shirt and boat shoes. He looked tired.
Then came the relatives. Seventeen of them. Coolers. Luggage. Beach bags. Pool noodles. A cornhole set. Phones already raised for pictures.
Nova walked up my porch steps. She took a key out of her purse.
The emergency key. The one I’d mailed to Randall. In case anything ever happens to me.
She walked right past the little sign by the front door. This property is monitored by video and audio recording. She didn’t even glance at it.
She unlocked my front door. She threw it open.
“Welcome to paradise!” she announced.
Margaret looked at me over the laptop.
“Told you,” she said. “They never read the signs.”
Through the laptop speakers, I heard every word.
Patricia, Nova’s mother, a heavyset woman in her sixties with a sunburn already, walked straight into my bedroom. “I’ll take this one,” she said. “Best view.”
Two teenagers claimed my guest room. They threw their bags on the bed I’d made with fresh sheets that morning.
Someone opened my refrigerator. “There’s like no beer in here,” a man’s voice said. “Who doesn’t keep beer?”
“Old people,” someone answered. Everybody laughed.
Somebody turned on my TV. Loud. A baseball game.
Somebody’s kid knocked a picture off my wall in the hallway. A framed photo of Leon in his firefighter uniform. I heard the glass crack. Nobody picked it up.
I sat very still in the hotel room.
Margaret put her hand on my arm.
“Steady,” she said.
“I’m steady,” I said. “I’ll shake later.”
Around six o’clock, most of the relatives went down to the beach. The teenagers. The cousins. The aunts and uncles with their coolers and pool noodles.
Four people stayed behind.
Nova. Randall. Patricia. And Nova’s younger sister, a woman named Brooke.
They gathered around my kitchen table. The one with the yellow-checked curtains.
Nova pulled a stack of papers out of her designer bag. She spread them across my table. Exactly where Margaret had spread my papers four weeks earlier.
“So,” Nova said. She smiled. “The plan is working perfectly.”
My whole body went still.
“I’ve already contacted three real estate agents,” Nova said. “They’re all coming by tomorrow morning to do walkthroughs. We should get at least four hundred thousand if we move quickly. Maybe four-twenty with the ocean view.”
“What about Dorene?” Brooke asked. “Doesn’t she have to sign?”
Nova laughed.
“She’s already mentally checking out,” she said. “Didn’t you hear Randall? She called him last week and said maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly when she bought the house.” She flipped her hair. “Classic early dementia. The confusion. The second-guessing.”
Then Randall spoke.
My son.
“She repeats herself,” he said. “Forgets conversations. I’ve been documenting it.”
I stared at the laptop screen.
“Last month she asked me the same question twice in one phone call,” he said. “About whether I was coming for the Fourth. And she called me Leon once. That’s my dad’s name. He’s been dead twenty-eight years.” He looked down at the table. “I wrote it all down. Dates and everything. Nova said we’d need it.”
I had never once in my life called him Leon.
I’d asked him twice if he was coming for the Fourth because he hadn’t answered the first time.
He was inventing evidence against me. My son. In my kitchen.
Nova reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
“The beauty of it,” she said, “is that she thinks this was all her idea. She actually called and said the house was too much for her. I didn’t even have to push.”
Patricia frowned. “Nova, honey,” she said slowly. “You told me Dorene invited us. You said she wanted to meet the family.”
“She did,” Nova said quickly. “Sort of. She said she was looking forward to it.”
“And the shed?” Patricia said. “You said she wanted to stay in the guest cottage. That she preferred it.”
Nova waved her hand. “Mom. Relax. It’s for her own good.”
Then Nova leaned back in my chair. She stretched her arms over her head. She looked out my kitchen window at my ocean.
“I’ve been planting the seeds for months,” she said.
And that was the moment I stopped hoping I’d misunderstood them.
Margaret closed the laptop.
“Well,” she said. “That’s enough.”
I didn’t say anything. My hands were shaking now. All the adrenaline leaving my body. Like water out of a bathtub.
“Dorene,” Margaret said gently. “You okay?”
“I’m shaking,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “That means it’s later.”
The next morning, at nine a.m., the reunion was in full swing.
Seventeen people on my porch and my lawn. Somebody had set up the cornhole game in my side yard, right on top of my vegetable garden. Somebody was frying bacon in my kitchen. Teenagers were taking selfies against my porch railing, in front of my roses.
Nova was standing on the front steps in a white sundress, with a coffee cup. My coffee cup. My grandmother’s blue-and-white cup.
She was waiting for the real estate agents.
At 9:15, the first car pulled up. A woman in a red blazer with a clipboard got out.
Then a second car. A man in a gray suit.
Then a third. Another woman, with a camera bag for listing photos.
Nova waved at them. Big smile. “Welcome! Come on in! Isn’t it gorgeous?”
And then a fourth car pulled up.
A silver Lexus.
And a fifth car. A Sussex County Sheriff’s cruiser.
The relatives on the lawn stopped what they were doing. The cornhole game stopped. The teenagers lowered their phones.
The door of the silver Lexus opened.
Margaret Chen stepped out in her navy suit. With her leather briefcase.
The passenger door opened.
And I stepped out.
I’d thought about what to wear. For a long time.
In the end, I wore my scrubs. My old navy blue ones from St. Mary’s. With my name badge still clipped to the pocket. DORENE WALSH, RN. 43 YEARS.
I don’t know why. It just felt right. It felt like who I was.
I walked up my own driveway. Past the SUVs parked on my lawn. Past the pink rosebush crushed under a tire. Past the cornhole game on my vegetable garden.
Seventeen people turned to look at me.
Nova saw me. She went white. My grandmother’s coffee cup slipped in her hand. Coffee splashed down the front of her white sundress.
“Dorene,” she said. “What—what are you doing here? You said you’d be at a friend’s.”
“I was,” I said. “Three blocks away. At the Holiday Inn.” I nodded at Margaret. “With my friend.”
Randall came out the front door behind Nova. In his bathrobe. Holding a plate of bacon.
He saw me. He saw the sheriff’s cruiser. He saw Margaret in her suit.
The plate of bacon tilted in his hand.
“Mom?” he said.
“Good morning, Randall,” I said.
The deputy got out of his cruiser. A tall young man with a buzz cut. Deputy Hollis. He walked up beside Margaret.
The three real estate agents were standing on my porch, looking very confused.
“Excuse me,” the woman in the red blazer said. “Is there a problem? We’re here for the listing walkthrough. Ms. Walsh invited us.” She pointed at Nova.
“That’s not Ms. Walsh,” I said. “I’m Ms. Walsh. Dorene Walsh. This is my house.”
The woman in the red blazer looked at Nova. Then at me.
“Ms. Walsh,” Margaret said, stepping forward. She opened her briefcase. She took out a folder. “I’m Margaret Chen, attorney for Dorene Walsh. This property is held in the Dorene E. Walsh Revocable Trust, dated June 6th. Ms. Walsh is the sole trustee.” She handed a copy of the trust document to each of the three agents. “No one else has authority to list, sell, transfer or encumber this property. Anyone who tells you otherwise is mistaken. Or lying.”
The man in the gray suit read the first page. He looked up at Nova.
“You told me you had power of attorney,” he said. “You said your mother-in-law had dementia.”
“She does,” Nova said quickly. “She—she’s confused. That’s why she’s wearing that. Look at her. Wearing scrubs. To a family reunion. She thinks she’s still at work.”
Margaret reached back into her briefcase.
She took out a second folder. Thick. Forty pages.
“This,” Margaret said, “is a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation of Dorene Walsh, completed on June 18th by Dr. Abena Osei, board-certified geriatric psychiatrist.” She handed it to the man in the gray suit. “Page thirty-one. Summary. Ms. Walsh scored in the ninety-eighth percentile for cognitive function in her age group. Dr. Osei’s exact words are exceptionally sharp.“
The man in the gray suit flipped to page thirty-one. He read it. He handed it back.
“I’m going to leave,” he said to Nova. “Please don’t contact me again.” He walked down the porch steps to his car.
The photographer followed him.
The woman in the red blazer stayed. She looked at me.
“Ma’am,” she said. “I’m so sorry. She showed me Instagram posts. She said you’d been declining for months.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve seen them.”
By now, all seventeen relatives were gathered on the lawn. Watching. Patricia was standing at the bottom of the porch steps in a bathing suit cover-up. Brooke was beside her.
Nova was still on the porch. Coffee all down her white sundress. Her face was red.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “This is completely ridiculous. Randall, tell her. Tell her about the notes. About how she’s been forgetting things. Calling you by your dad’s name.”
Randall didn’t say anything. He was still holding the plate of bacon. He was staring at me in my scrubs.
“Randall,” Nova said. “Tell her.“
I looked at Margaret. She nodded.
“I think,” I said, “we should all go inside. There’s something everybody should see. All of you.”
We went inside. All of us. Seventeen relatives, crammed into my living room. Sitting on my couch, my chairs, the floor. Teenagers leaning against the wall. Deputy Hollis stood by the front door with his arms crossed.
Margaret picked up the TV remote. My TV. The one somebody had been watching baseball on, too loud, the day before.
She connected her laptop.
“For the record,” Margaret said, to the room, “this property has a posted notice at the front door stating that it is monitored by video and audio recording. It’s been there since June eleventh.” She looked at Nova. “Right next to the doorbell. You walked past it with the emergency key.”
Nova’s face went from red to white.
Margaret pressed play.
On the big screen, my kitchen table appeared. The yellow-checked curtains. Nova. Randall. Patricia. Brooke.
“So,” Nova said on the screen. “The plan is working perfectly.”
The living room went completely silent.
“I’ve already contacted three real estate agents. We should get at least four hundred thousand if we move quickly.”
“What about Dorene?”
“She’s already mentally checking out. Classic early dementia.”
Then Randall’s voice.
“She repeats herself. Forgets conversations. I’ve been documenting it. She called me Leon once. That’s my dad’s name.”
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