That was enough to make her answer.
“He said you could take me to appointments.”
I waited.
“And?”
She shifted.
“Help with meals.”
“And?”
“Keep an eye on my pills.”
Daniel said quickly, “It’s not like she needs twenty-four-hour care.”
“Then why did any of that need to become my job?”
“Because you’re better with schedules.”
I almost smiled.
There it was again.
The strange logic of our marriage.
If I was good at something, Daniel concluded I should be responsible for it.
Cooking.
Planning.
Remembering.
Organizing.
Caregiving.
Fixing.
He had turned competence into obligation.
“What would you be doing?” I asked him.
He frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“While I cook for your mother, take her to appointments and manage her medication, what were you planning to do?”
“I work.”
“So do I.”
“My business is demanding.”
“My job is demanding.”
“You have more flexibility.”
“I have flexibility because I turned down a promotion four years ago.”
Daniel looked away.
Lorraine said, “You agreed to that.”
“Yes.”
I looked at her.
“I agreed because Daniel told me his business needed time to stabilize and our home needed one predictable schedule. He promised it was temporary.”
Daniel stood.
“So now we’re reopening every decision we ever made?”
“No.”
I remained seated.
“I’m finally looking at the pattern.”
He began pacing.
“This is unbelievable. I made one bad decision.”
“You made dozens of decisions.”
“Like what?”
“You decided Lorraine would move in. You decided I would care for her. You decided company money could pay for the move. You decided my inheritance would cover the shortage if things got tight. You decided none of it required a conversation with me.”
“I was trying to help my mother.”
“Then help her.”
“I am.”
“No. You outsourced it.”
Lorraine stood very still in the doorway.
For the first time since I arrived, she looked uncomfortable rather than offended.
Then she said quietly, “He told me you didn’t mind.”
Daniel stopped pacing.
I turned toward her.
“What?”
“He said you wouldn’t mind having me here.”
I looked at Daniel.
His face changed.
Lorraine continued.
“He said you liked having family around and that because you already helped me with things, living here wouldn’t be much different.”
Daniel interrupted.
“Mom.”
“No,” she said. “If we’re going to have this conversation, we’re going to have it.”
Then she looked at me.
“I thought you knew before this week.”
Some of my anger toward her shifted.
Not all of it.
She had still stood in my bedroom wearing my robe and told me a good wife should already be downstairs.
But this was more complicated than I had understood at 4:40 that morning.
“You thought I knew you were moving in?”
“Daniel told me he was handling it with you.”
I looked at him.
“Handling it?”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
He had no answer.
Lorraine sat down across from me.
“My rent was going up two hundred and thirty dollars when the lease renewed,” she said. “Daniel said it was foolish for me to keep paying that much when you had empty bedrooms.”
There was the motive.
Not homelessness.
Not an emergency.
Not a medical crisis.
A rent increase.
And Daniel had decided the solution was my house and my labor.
Lorraine looked toward him.
“He also said it would help him because he wouldn’t have to keep running across town when I needed something.”
I almost laughed.
“So both of you were going to save money and time.”
Neither answered.
“And I was going to provide the difference.”
Daniel sank back into his chair.
“When you say it like that, it sounds terrible.”
“I’m saying what happened.”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I know.”
That was the saddest part.
I believed him.
Daniel wasn’t sitting there rubbing his hands together, plotting how to exploit me.
He had simply become so accustomed to my labor that he stopped seeing it as something that belonged to me.
To him, my time was a household resource.
Like the dishwasher.
Like the extra bedroom.
Available unless already in use.
I pulled the red folder from my bag and put it on the table.
Daniel stared at it.
“What do you want?”
“I want the company to reimburse every personal expense connected to Lorraine’s move in whatever way your accountant says is proper.”
“I told you the cash flow is tight.”
“Then work it out with your accountant.”
“And what about Mom?”
I looked at Lorraine.
“I am not going to be her caregiver.”
“I don’t need a caregiver,” she snapped.