I sat beside him and drank my chocolate in silence. Outside, the city was beginning to wake up. You could hear the first trucks, the whistle of the man selling bagels on the corner, the barking of the neighbor’s dog on the second floor.
“Grandma,” Ethan said after a while, “can I stay with you?”
“Of course. For as long as you need.”
“No, I mean… forever. I don’t want to go back to that house. Not with her there.”
I placed my cup on the coffee table and looked at him.
“Ethan, legally your father has custody. I can only have you temporarily until the case is resolved. If you want to stay with me permanently, we’ll have to do things properly—with lawyers, with judges.”
“But my dad will never agree.”
“We don’t know until we try.”
He shook his head.
“He does everything Chelsea tells him. Since they got married, it’s like my dad is a different person. Do you know what I heard a week ago?”
“What did you hear?”
Ethan lowered his voice as if someone could hear us.
“They were in their room. I was going to the bathroom and passed their door. It was slightly ajar. Chelsea was talking on the phone with someone. She was saying, ‘Don’t worry. Everything is going according to plan. When the old lady dies, Rob will inherit the house. We’ll sell it and get at least $4,500,000. With that and what I’ve already saved, we’ll go to Miami. We’ll open the hotel we always dreamed of. And the kid… we’ll send him to a military boarding school in San Diego. Let someone else deal with him.’”
I felt the blood boil inside me.
“Are you sure of what you heard?”
“Completely sure, Grandma. That’s why… that night when I came home late and she attacked me, I knew it was part of her plan. She wants to push me away from you. She wants you to see me as a problem. She wants my dad to see me that way, too. And when I’m no longer in the way, all that’s left is to wait for you.”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. Chelsea was planning my death. Or at least she was waiting for me to die soon. And in the meantime, she was going to destroy any bond that existed between my son and me. Between Ethan and his father.
