“No,” Caleb said. “I wouldn’t have. And Renee never would have agreed to it at all.”
Deloris’s composure cracked slightly at that, just enough for me to see something underneath it I hadn’t expected. Not triumph. Fear.
I’d spent eleven years assuming everything Deloris did came from some place of quiet. Entitled confidence, a woman who simply believed she deserved whatever she took. Watching her face in that moment, I understood something different. Something almost sad underneath all the years of frustration.
I thought about her own mother then, a woman I’d only met a handful of times before she passed. Someone Deloris rarely talked about except in passing, careful. Clipped references that always hinted at more than she said out loud. I wondered, watching her sit there with fear finally showing through the cracks. How much of her own history had taught her that security only came from what you physically held onto. Never from what people simply promised to give freely.
“This family doesn’t just hand things over,” she said. “I’ve watched enough relatives lose everything trusting the wrong people. I wanted something real. Something that couldn’t just be taken away from me. If things ever went wrong between us.”
