Chapter 10 — Amalia’s Legacy

The worst of it, the part that still catches in my throat, involved two people: my grandmother, who was gone, and Damon’s mother, who very much was not.

Naomi’s audit turned up a transfer — sixty-four thousand dollars, moved from my trust through the usual channels into an LLC owned by Priscilla Rothwell, Damon’s mother.

It had covered the down payment on a beachfront condo in Oregon.

This was the same woman who had spent five years letting me know, in a thousand small ways, that I was not quite good enough for her son; who had called my body a waiting room; who, when I later confronted the family, would claim she had never known anything about the money because business was “men’s work.” She had known enough to spend it.