Sign the papers, Mom, or we put you in the cheap home with the

I clicked the pen open. Then I clicked it closed. ‘Brandon,’ I said gently, ‘before I sign, let’s talk about the loan.’ His smile flickered. Tiffany’s fork paused. ‘What loan?’ he said. I reached under my chair and lifted the leather folder I’d placed there before dinner — the one I’d been preparing for six months, ever since I noticed money quietly leaving the business account in amounts just small enough to ignore. I laid out the statements one by one, like place settings. Forty-seven thousand dollars, moved from my company’s payroll account to a shell LLC registered to Tiffany’s maiden name. ‘I’m the bookkeeper, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘I notice numbers.’ Brandon went the color of the cranberry sauce. ‘Mom, it’s not — we were going to pay it back when the house sold.’ ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So that’s what the deed is for.’ I slid a second document across the table. My attorney, Patricia — Brandon’s godmother, actually — had drawn it up that morning. It was a demand for repayment, with a notarized confession of embezzlement attached, unsigned, waiting. ‘You have two choices,’ I told him. ‘Option one: you sign this, you pay back every cent in ninety days, and you never speak the words nursing home to me again. Option two: I walk this folder into the precinct on Monday, and Tiffany explains to a judge why her maiden name is on a shell account.’ Tiffany stood up so fast her chair tipped. ‘Brandon, you said she wouldn’t check —’ ‘Sit down, dear,’ I said, in the voice I used to use when he tracked mud on the carpet. She sat. Brandon picked up the pen. His hand shook. He signed. I folded the confession back into the folder, poured myself a fresh glass of wine, and said, ‘Now. Who wants pie?’ The house is still mine. The locks changed Tuesday. And the silver pen — I kept it. It writes beautifully.