Chapter 6 - Ten Thousand Dollars
Elise looked from the ring to Mara.
“You had no right to come here.”
Mara’s voice was low.
“I had more right than your obituary gave me.”
The mourners shifted.
Reverend Cole stepped closer.
“Elise, Arthur left instructions.”
Elise turned on him.
“This is not the time.”
Mara laughed softly.
Rain ran down her face.
“You made sure there was never a time.”
Elise’s eyes flashed.
“You were paid to stay away.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she knew.
Too much.
Too clear.
Several mourners stared.
Mara went still.
“I was what?”
Elise’s lips parted.
Reverend Cole closed his eyes.
Because there it was.
Not suspicion.
Admission.
Mara stepped closer.
“My mother died working double shifts. I aged out of foster care with a trash bag. Tell me exactly who you paid.”
Elise swallowed.
The storm beat harder on the umbrellas.
Reverend Cole said quietly, “Elise.”
She snapped, “Her aunt. Her aunt took the money.”
Mara’s face changed.
Not because she knew.
Because she did not.
Her mother’s sister, Carol, had vanished after Lydia’s death. Mara assumed she did not want a child. That kind of rejection had become one of the walls inside her.
Elise lifted her chin, trying to regain dignity.
“Your aunt agreed it was best. Arthur was married. You were a child. Your mother had caused enough pain.”
Mara looked at Arthur’s coffin.
Then back at Elise.
“My mother caused pain?”
“She trapped him.”
Mara’s voice sharpened.
“She married him.”
Elise’s face tightened.
“No one recognizes that marriage.”
Reverend Cole finally spoke with authority.
“The state did.”
Silence.
Everyone looked at him.
He lowered his umbrella completely.
Rain soaked his gray hair.
“I have seen the certified record. Arthur and Lydia Ellison were legally married before Arthur married Elise. The legal dissolution filed later was irregular and is currently under review.”
Elise stared at him.
“You were supposed to keep this private.”
Another mistake.
Another sentence too honest.
The mourners were no longer whispering.
They were listening.
Mara reached for the ring again.
This time Elise did not block her.
Mara picked it up from the coffin lid and held it in her palm.
“My mother kept this until she died,” she said. “Arthur spent his last years asking why no one gave him her letters.”
Elise’s mouth trembled.
Then hardened.
“He is dead. You can’t fix any of it now.”
“No,” Mara said. “But I can stop you from burying it with him.”
A black sedan pulled up near the chapel.
Two people stepped out beneath umbrellas.
One was Rebecca Sloan, Arthur’s estate attorney.
The other was an older woman in a gray coat, thin, bent, and visibly terrified.
Mara recognized her from one faded photo.
Carol Ellison.
Her aunt.
Mara had not seen her since she was fourteen.
The cemetery seemed to tilt.
Carol walked through the mud like each step cost her twenty years.
Elise whispered, “No.”
Rebecca Sloan reached Reverend Cole’s side.
“Elise,” she said, “the burial cannot proceed until the amended family acknowledgment is entered into the record.”
Elise turned to her with pure hatred.
“You arranged this.”
“Arthur arranged this.”
“He was medicated.”
“He was lucid, recorded, witnessed, and extremely specific.”
Mara barely heard them.
She was staring at Carol.
The old woman stopped three feet away.
“Mara,” she whispered.
Mara said nothing.
Carol’s face crumpled.
“I’m sorry.”
Mara’s laugh was sharp enough to scare even herself.
“You’re sorry?”
Carol looked at the ground.
“She said if I took you in, they’d ruin me. I had two kids. My husband was sick. The money—”
“The money?” Mara repeated.
Carol cried harder.
“I told myself foster care would only be temporary.”
Mara stepped back.
Arthur’s coffin was behind her.
Elise in front of her.
Carol to the side.
All the adults who had decided her life without asking now stood around a grave pretending sorrow had made them human.
“How much?” Mara asked.
Carol shook her head.
“How much was I worth?”
Rebecca’s voice was soft.
“Ten thousand dollars.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Ten thousand dollars.
Fourteen years old.
A trash bag.
Three photographs.
A foster home that locked the pantry.
Another that took her shoes at night.
Another where she learned to sleep with furniture against the door.
Ten thousand dollars.
Elise said, “It was a different time.”
May you like
Mara opened her eyes.
“No. It was the same cruelty with better stationery.”
