Derek’s laughing.
“With everything you stole, you should be able to buy a banquet.”
Every part of me wanted to go through that door right away.
But the years working around broken machines had taught me something.
When something starts to break, listen before you touch it.
The noise tells you where the bug started.
So I heard.
Clara begged to let her call me.
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Then Vivian went out into the yard wearing the golden necklace with a hummingbird that I had given to Clara for our fifth anniversary.
“He has a right to know that I’m sick,” Clara said.
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“You’re not going to worry about it,” Vivian replied. “He’s working to get through, not to carry your dramas.”
Clara said the doctor wanted her to continue the treatment.
Vivian despised what the doctors had said.
Then he uttered the phrase that stirred my stomach.
“My son sends the money to my account. That means I decide how it is used.”
Clara pointed to the new SUV outside, Derek’s newly opened mechanic shop and remodeled house.
Then he said he had been sleeping in the shed.
“I just want to finish my treatment,” he whispered.
Real estate market
Vivian crossed his arms.
“You should have thought of it before you got sick.”
That was enough.
I pushed the door and walked in.
My suitcase fell to the ground.
Derek dropped his cup.
Vivian took a hand to his chest.
Clara looked at me like I was seeing a ghost.
“Michael…”
I crossed the yard and knelt next to my wife.
He felt much weaker than he remembered and had a slight smell of bleach, medicine and wet clothes.
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“I’m here, honey.”
She kept repeating my name.
Vivian immediately began to insist that things were not what they seemed.
He accused Clara of becoming unbearable after falling ill.
To demand money.
From breaking things.
Even stealing jewelry.
I looked directly at the hummingbird pendant around my mother’s neck.
Foreign currency and currency exchange
“Like that?”
Vivian covered it with his hand.
Clara told me that she had tried to sell the necklace to pay for a visit to the doctor.
Vivian had taken it from him.
Then I asked the question that no one wanted to answer.
“What disease does it have?”
Clara touched her chest.
