“You were always dramatic,” she said. “Thirty-one years, and you still can’t help it. Lying in a hospital bed, making a scene in front of strangers. Look at them, Michelle. Look at what you’re doing to this family.”
Her hand closed around my wrist.
The Cartier bracelet was ice against my skin.
She pressed the pen into my fingers and squeezed until my knuckles went white.
“Sign it,” she said. “Or don’t come home.”
I did not look at the pen.
I looked at my mother’s face, and I saw something I had never seen in thirty-one years of looking.
She was afraid.
Not of me.
Of the page.
“Mom,” I said. “Why does it matter so much what I sign?”
She let go of my wrist.
And then, without warning, she turned and lunged for the surgeon’s neck.
“Take that off,” she said. “That belongs to this family.”
She grabbed the chain.
