Chapter 2 - Thirty Days Written On Paper
No one moved after I said it. The words about his letter just hung there over the marble.
My daughter kept her palm up over the counter, like if she held it there long enough I'd put something in it. The cracked black phone sat where it had landed. The beige case was beside it, empty. My mug was still on the left side, coffee gone cold.
My son stood in the doorway with his dark blue phone in his hand. He looked from her to me.
"Mom," he said again, quieter this time. "You removed my bank access?"
"Yes," I said.
That was all I gave him. My hand was flat on the counter. I could feel the cool stone under my palm and it steadied me.
My daughter dropped her hand and grabbed the edge of the island. "You're not serious about thirty days. You can't just throw me out."
I didn't answer her right away. I turned and opened the junk drawer by the stove. Pens, rubber bands, old takeout menus, the notepad I used for grocery lists. I pulled the notepad out and laid it on the counter next to the shattered phone.
"What are you doing?" she said.
I picked up a pen. My fingers were stiff. I wrote the date at the top. October 1. Then underneath, in my plain print: You have 30 days to move out. October 31 is the last day.
I tore the sheet off and set it face-up between us.
She stared at it. She didn't touch it. "I'm not taking that."
"It's written," I said. "So there's no confusion."
"You can't do this over Wi-Fi," she said. Her voice climbed. "Just give me the new Wi-Fi password. Please. I need it right now."
I folded my hands. "No."
She pushed the paper back toward me with two fingers, like it was dirty. It slid and stopped against the beige case. "Please. I'm asking you. I have stuff I have to do today."
My son stepped in then, into the kitchen proper. He put his phone down on the island, screen up. "Okay. Okay, both of you. Let's just slow down." He looked at me. "Mom, can we talk about this? I tried my card this morning for gas. It declined. I figured it was a mistake at the bank."
"It wasn't a mistake," I said. "I closed the access yesterday afternoon."
He blinked. "You closed it. Mine too?"
"Yours too."
He picked his phone back up and turned it in his hand. "I have bills tied to that account. You could've told me."
"I just did," I said.
My daughter let out a short breath. "See? This is what I'm talking about. You're choosing money over family."
I looked at her. "I refused you ten thousand dollars. You smashed my phone on this counter."
She glanced at the cracked screen and then away. "I didn't mean— It slipped. I was mad."
"It didn't slip," I said.
A silence settled. The refrigerator hummed. Light came hard through the plantation shutters in white bars across the cabinets.
My son rubbed the back of his neck. "Mom, if you changed the Wi-Fi too, at least give us the password till we figure the rest out. How are we supposed to do anything here without internet?"
I walked around the end of the island to the hallway where the router sat on the little table by the family photos. They both watched me go. I could hear my daughter's light pants swish as she followed a few steps, then stopped.
The router blinked green. I pulled the card the cable company left with the new setup code and typed the new password into my own phone with careful thumbs. I wrote it on the back of another grocery slip and put that slip in my shirt pocket.
When I came back, my daughter was standing where I'd been, staring at the thirty-day note.
"Is it changed?" my son asked. "The Wi-Fi?"
"Yes," I said. "Just now."
"So what's the password?" my daughter said quickly. "Come on."
I shook my head. "Not until we have some rules."
Her face tightened. "You locked me out of everything. My phone's data is almost gone. You know that."
I picked up the thirty-day notice where she'd pushed it against the case. I carried it to the refrigerator and slid it under the apple magnet. It hung there, white against stainless steel.
She read it over my shoulder and her breathing went shallow. "Take it down."
"It's staying," I said.
May you like
My son stood beside the island, looking at his declined banking app, then at the note on the fridge, then at me. He didn't argue the paper. He just said, "So it's real. No access. No Wi-Fi."
"That's right for now," I said, and my hand rested again on the counter to keep it still.
