Chapter 1 - THE SOUND OF GLASS
“Oops.”
Jessica said it while three generations of my family lay broken at her feet.
It was my seventieth birthday. Twelve guests stood around the fire pit behind my son Michael's new villa, their drinks suspended in midair. A moment earlier, Jessica had driven her elbow into the gilded picture frame beside my cake. I saw her aim. I saw her watch it fall. Now the glass lay across the patio, and my mother's face stared up from a photograph bent in half.
“Mom,” Michael whispered, already reaching for his wife's waist. “Please don't make a scene.”
I wore the wine-red dress my late husband Frank bought me for our fortieth anniversary. I had polished that frame in my kitchen that morning. My mother held me as a newborn in one photograph; I held Michael in another. It had survived a flood, two moves, and Frank's funeral.
Jessica looked at my shaking hands and smiled. “It's only a frame, Eleanor. I'll order another.”
“Then order another mother,” I said.
Her smile vanished. I bent and gathered the photograph, brushing away the sharpest pieces. I pressed its torn corner against her immaculate cheek, then pushed the broken gold frame against her chest as she retreated into a lounge chair. The chair tipped. Glass caught in her blonde hair. I stepped back at once, horrified at how quickly my anger had taken my hands away from me.
“What is WRONG with you?” she screamed.
“Oops,” I said. The word tasted awful.
My oldest friend, Lois, rushed between us. “Eleanor, put it down.” I did. Michael stared as though he had never met either of us.
Jessica reached for her handbag, knocking it against the cake table. A cream envelope slid halfway out. I recognized the blue stationery from Frank's attorney—and the words printed across its top.
RELEASE OF DEED OF TRUST.
I had never signed a release. And the villa beneath our feet had been bought with two hundred eighty-six thousand dollars of my mother's land money.
“Michael,” I asked, “why is your wife carrying a document with my name on it?”
Jessica snatched the envelope back. “Because your son and I have a house to sell.”
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