Chapter 6 - The Yellow Room
The first thing I bought with money Marcus couldn't monitor was a pair of ridiculous yellow slippers.
They had tiny embroidered lemons on the toes. I found them in a pharmacy after a follow-up appointment and almost put them back because Vivian would have called them childish. Then I realized Vivian had no vote. I stood in the aisle holding two pairs of slippers and cried so hard that an elderly man offered me a tissue from a brand-new packet.
“Yellow's a good color,” he said kindly.
I bought them because he was right.
Recovery did not proceed in a straight line. Some mornings I woke hungry and hopeful. Other mornings the smell of cooked cinnamon made me nauseated. A slammed cabinet could turn my whole body rigid. If someone asked what I wanted for dinner, I'd instinctively say whatever was easiest for them. My advocate reminded me that these responses were understandable after prolonged coercion, but I didn't find them charming. I wanted myself back immediately.
“Your old self isn't a missing set of keys,” Isabel said when I complained. “You don't need to search the whole house until you find her exactly where you left her.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Decide what kind of slippers she'd wear.”
She hadn't seen the lemons yet. When I showed her, she laughed and asked whether I was accepting visitors from the citrus family.
The transitional residence had six bedrooms, a bright kitchen, and women who carried grief in different shapes. I didn't ask why anyone was there. Nobody demanded to hear my worst story before sitting beside me. We chopped vegetables, folded donated clothes, and argued over a battered puzzle that appeared to depict every lighthouse ever built. For the first time in years, conversation could end without someone keeping score.
My practical problems remained. Marcus had transferred nearly everything out of our joint checking account, claiming the funds were needed for company expenses. Nadia was reviewing what remedies were available. I had my own older savings, though not enough for a long legal fight, and a house I could not safely live in yet. Leah offered me her spare bedroom, but I wanted to keep my location private while the initial protective proceedings moved forward.
I also wanted to work.
Before the Wards reduced me to their household administrator, I had managed scheduling, payroll, and vendor contracts for healthcare clinics across three counties. I had known how to solve staffing emergencies, lead difficult meetings, and challenge invoices without apologizing to whoever sent them. My résumé didn't show the years of unpaid labor I'd done at the Ward estate, but my mind still remembered how numbers fitted together.
A friend of Leah's told me about a community food program seeking temporary operations help. I arranged an interview through its actual hiring process. The director, Simone Park, asked why my recent employment history was irregular.
“I had family obligations,” I answered. “They're changing.”
She didn't ask me to put my personal life on trial. She gave me an inventory worksheet and asked how I would keep donated produce from spoiling before distribution day. I loved the question so much I nearly hugged her. I suggested a workable scheduling plan and showed her how I'd track deliveries against the community kitchens' needs.
“Can you start part-time next month?” she asked.
My answer arrived before my fear. “Yes.”
That afternoon, I called Nadia to tell her. She congratulated me, then explained that the property problem had grown more complicated. A lender had produced an electronic file purporting to contain my approval of the preliminary Rosewood arrangement. It had been generated from a household email address Marcus controlled. The date corresponded to a weekend when he had taken my phone after accusing Leah of interfering in our marriage.
“Can we prove I didn't approve it?”
“We can challenge the documents and request the relevant records. We shouldn't assume the existence of an electronic entry settles who authorized it.”
Then she mentioned another name. Celeste Ward had responded to her inquiry. She denied witnessing my signature and was willing to speak with us.
I sat up. “Why would Marcus's sister help me?”
“I don't know yet. And you don't have to trust her to hear what she has to say.”
Celeste arrived at Nadia's office two days later wearing jeans, a dark green coat, and the expression of a woman expecting to be blamed for something before she had taken her seat. She reminded me of Marcus around the eyes, which made it hard to breathe until she spoke.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “My mother told me you were dramatic. I believed her longer than I should have.”
“You don't know me,” I replied.
“No. But I know what she does when somebody says no.”
Celeste explained that she had been in Oregon at a booksellers' conference on the date she supposedly witnessed the Rosewood document. She had receipts, photographs, and the conference's attendance record. She said Marcus often used old stationery carrying her signature for routine family-company matters, and she wanted to know exactly how her name had appeared on the form.
“Does your mother know you're here?” I asked.
Celeste's smile was tired. “She stopped telling me what to do seven years ago. She still makes the occasional attempt.”
For an hour she answered Nadia's questions and corrected dates I'd remembered inaccurately. She did not ask me to forgive Marcus. She did not insist we were family and therefore obligated to keep secrets. She offered a possible source for company files, then said she would share only what she was legally entitled to obtain.
When she left, I sat beside the conference-room window and let myself imagine a family in which being related did not mean defending every terrible thing another person did.
That night the residence held a small birthday dinner for one of its guests. We sang badly. Somebody burned the garlic bread. I ate cake in my yellow slippers and felt almost embarrassed by how happy such an ordinary evening made me.
Before bed, Leah sent a photograph of Rosewood's porch. The old blue paint was peeling, but the wicker chair still stood beneath the window, exactly where Evelyn used to sit with a bowl of strawberries. Mr. Bell had put a small planter beside it to keep the steps from looking abandoned.
I stared at the image until tears blurred the screen. I wanted that house back. I wanted to put my own key in the door and invite people who would not demand gratitude in exchange for sitting at my table.
May you like
Then Nadia sent one more message. An independent reviewer had noticed that the disputed authorization referenced a document supposedly signed by Evelyn a year after her death.
Someone had been careless enough to let a dead woman's name tell the truth.
