Chapter 5: The Begging
My mother came out of the dining room then, her gray silk trousers rustling against each other like dry corn husks. Her wineglass was gone, replaced by a look of intense, frantic panic that made her high cheekbones look sharp enough to cut paper. She looked at me, then at the snow drifting onto the hall rug, then at her husband’s purple face.
"Maren, stop this nonsense," she said, her voice trying its best to return to that airy, conversational register but failing, the words coming out high and ragged at the edges. "Think of the family. Think of your sister. Richard’s entire bonus is tied to the holiday yield. If the Toledo terminal stays closed, they’ll lose the contract with the grocery chains. They won't be able to pay the second mortgage on the house in Hunting Valley."
I looked past her at Talia, who was standing in the dining room doorway, her cashmere sweater pulled tight around her ribs, her pearl earrings shaking against her neck as she watched her husband stare at his red phone screen. She didn't look honesthly like the favorite anymore. She looked like a girl whose paper castle had just caught the edge of the stove.
"Christmas is so much better without us, Mom," I said, quoting the words back to her with a precision that made her mouth drop open into a small, dry square. "You said the energy was too heavy when we were in the room. You said we brought the road into the house. So we’re leaving. We're going back to Madison Avenue where the energy is just right."
"Maren, please!" Talia cried out, stepping into the hall now, her bare feet slipping on the cold floorboards. She didn't look at me; she looked at my father. "Dad, do something! Make her fix it! Richard, call the police!"
"The police can't do anything, Talia," Richard said, his voice dropping into a flat, dead register of a man who had just seen the bottom of his bank account. "It’s a civil contract dispute. The server’s in Illinois, the IP is held by her business LLC, and the manifest data is encrypted under her private key. If she doesn't enter the token, those trucks are just eighty-four very expensive metal boxes sitting on the shoulder of the highway."
My father took a long, deep breath. The purple color in his face began to fade, replaced by a gray, wet pallor that looked like the snow outside when the dirt from the coal trucks hit it. He looked at me, his large hand dropping from the edge of the door, his fingers curling into his palms.
"Eighty-four hundred," he said, his voice barely louder than the wind whistling through the leaded glass.
"Plus the late fees," I told him, my hand tightening around Wren’s small, rubber-gloved fingers. "And the cost of the bus ticket back to Lakewood. Let's call it ten thousand flat."
"I'll write the check," he said, turning toward the small writing desk under the mirror.
"No checks, Dad," I said. "Your checks have a way of getting held up by the processing department when you call your friends at the bank. I want a wire transfer to the business account. Right now. Richard knows how to use the clearinghouse app on his phone. It takes two minutes."
Richard didn't wait for his father-in-law's permission. He practically fell over the umbrella stand to get to his briefcase in the sunroom, his thumbs moving across his phone screen with a frantic, typing rhythm that looked like a spider caught in a web.
"It’s done," Richard panted thirty seconds later, stumbling back into the hall and holding up the screen. The blue light showed a confirmation number from the Federal Reserve wire service: TR-98402-CLE. "The funds are cleared, Maren. Check your ledger. Please. The drivers are calling from the rest stops. The state police are starting to flag them for illegal parking on the ramps."
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I pulled my phone out again. I didn't look at the confirmation number; I looked at Wren. Her small face was looking out into the dark yard where the snow was swirling around the yellow porch light like a cloud of silver bees.
"Mommy," she whispered. "The bus is coming. I can see the white lights down by the corner."
