There was a long, static-filled pause. In the background, I could hear a woman’s voice—Tori—shouting something sharp and muffled, followed by the clatter of a carry-on bag being slammed against a counter.
"You... you went to Portugal?" Caleb’s voice rose into a high, cracking register. "You actually went?"
"Caleb, I told you five months ago I was going to Portugal. I gave you the dates. I sent you the itinerary."
"I thought that was a joke!" he shouted. "Or... or that you were looking at trips for the fall! Mom, you can't just leave four children with Patrice! She doesn't know Maggie’s nap routine! She told Tori on the phone that she was going to make Eli mow the lawn!"
"Eli is fourteen," I said, watching the yellow tram disappear around the curve of the hill. "He is quite capable of pushing a mower. His father was mowing the lawn at twelve."
"Mom, put Tori on—wait, no, she’s grabbing the phone—"
There was a scuffle, a burst of electronic feedback, and then Tori’s voice cut through the line like a razor through silk. She wasn't panicked; she was furious, that cold, incandescent rage of a person who has discovered that an appliance has refused to turn on.
"Myrna, this is completely unacceptable," Tori said, her words clipped and rapid-fire. "We just spent fourteen hours on a plane. We are at Narita Airport. My mother is threatening to throw away all the organic snacks I bought and she told Caleb he was an irresponsible coward who shouldn't have been allowed to graduate from high school!"
"Well," I said, "your mother has always had a way with words."
"This isn't funny!" Tori’s voice hit a pitch that turned several heads on the street below my balcony. "We paid eight thousand dollars for this trip! We have a private dinner in Kyoto on Saturday! You are their grandmother! It was your job to watch them!"
"No, Tori," I said. I spoke softly, but I made sure every consonant was clear. "It was never my job. It was a favor you never asked for."
"I put the folder on your counter!"
"A folder is not a conversation," I told her. "A folder is an invoice. And I don't work for you."
"We are turning around," Tori hissed. "We are going to find a flight back right now, and when we get home—"
"If you fly home," I interrupted, "you will spend sixteen hours in a middle seat, you will waste eight thousand dollars, and your children will still be at your mother’s house. Patrice is entirely capable of keeping four healthy children alive for twelve days. She raised you, didn't she?"
Tori made a choking sound in the back of her throat.
"Enjoy your dinner in Kyoto, Tori," I said. "I am going to get an espresso and a custard tart."
I pressed the red button on the screen. The call ended.
The silence that followed was different from the silence in my empty hallway at home. It was filled with the smell of orange blossoms drifting up from the courtyard below and the distant, silver ringing of church bells from the cathedral down the hill.
My hands were shaking, just a little, around the edges of the phone. But as I took a deep breath of the salt air, my lungs felt larger than they had in five years.
***
Chapter 5 - The War Room on Oak Crest
Back in Ohio, as Patrice later told me over a bottle of vinho verde three months later, the war began at approximately eight-fifteen that same evening.
Patrice had not remained in her navy-blue housecoat. By noon, she had changed into a pair of crisp beige trousers, an ironed white cotton shirt, and an old pair of leather loafers that she had bought in Florence in the late nineties. She had set up what she referred to as "the command center" at her formal dining room table—a mahogany expanse that had previously only seen Spode china and silver candelabras.
The red plastic folder lay open in the center of the table like a dissected toad.
Eli sat at the far end, his laptop open, his textbook propped up against a crystal water pitcher. Chloe was sitting on the rug in the corner, methodically brushing the tangles out of a collection of American Girl dolls that Patrice had retrieved from the attic—dolls that had once belonged to Tori. Finn was standing on a stepstool at the kitchen sink, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, surrounded by a mountain of suds as he washed three plastic bowls under Patrice’s watchful eye.
"More elbow grease on the oatmeal bowl, Finnian," Patrice commanded from the doorway, her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. "Dried starch is the enemy of civilization."
"Grandma," Finn whined, "Mom says dish soap gives me contact dermatitis."
"Your mother," Patrice replied without looking up from her legal pad, "believes that anything that requires physical effort is a medical condition. Use the sponge."
The landline on the wall rang. It was the special ring—two shorts and a long—that indicated an international relay.
Patrice walked over, lifted the receiver with two fingers, and pressed it to her ear.
"Oak Crest residence," she said, using the tone she normally reserved for telemarketers who called during Masterpiece Theatre.
"Mom!" Tori’s voice was loud enough that Eli glanced up from his history reading with a look of pure, terrified delight. "Put Eli on the phone right now. I am ordering an Uber to take them to Caleb’s partner’s house—"
"You will do no such thing," Patrice said calmly. "Eli is currently completing three chapters of European history that you allowed him to neglect last week. Furthermore, Caleb’s law partner has four children of his own and a golden retriever with hip dysplasia; he does not need your domestic overflow."
"Mom, you don't know their schedule!"
"Victoria," Patrice said, using her daughter’s full name with the weight of an anvil dropping into a well. "I gave birth to you in a hospital with no air conditioning during the hottest July on record. I taught you how to read, I taught you how to drive a stick shift, and I paid for four years of private college so you could learn how to speak three languages, none of which appear to include basic manners. Do not tell me what I know."