I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
She’d said nothing about having a group project.
An uneasy feeling settled in my gut. Maybe it was a mother’s instinct, but I knew she was lying to me. Again.
This time, I was determined to find out what my daughter was up to.
I grabbed my keys.
I parked across the street from her school and waited.
Kids poured out in clumps, loud and loose, backpacks hanging off one shoulder, laughing like the day had not exhausted them.
Then I saw Ellie.
She came out alone and stopped on the front steps.
She looked left.
Then right.
Then over her shoulder. Checking that the coast was clear.
Then she turned and walked away from the lot.
Not toward the buses, or the park where kids hung out. She cut across the edge of the field, passed the back row of houses, and started walking fast, like she had an appointment to keep.
I followed from a distance, creeping along side streets.
When she stopped in front of a small blue house with white shutters, my heart skipped a beat.
I knew that house; I knew who lived there, and if Ellie went inside, she would be in danger.
Ellie walked up the steps and knocked.
I threw the car into park and leaped out.
I didn’t even shut the door.
She spun around, startled, and then the front door opened.
An older woman stepped onto the porch.
By the time I hit the bottom step, Ellie had gone from shocked to furious.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped. “Did you follow me?”
“Yes! You’ve been hiding things and lying to me for weeks, and now I know why.”
I looked past her at the woman standing near the door.
Carol, my ex-mother-in-law.
She had one hand on the doorframe, calm as ever, smiling that sweet smile she used when she said cruel things in a gentle voice.
“You’re up to your old tricks again, aren’t you?” I said. “What lies have you told my daughter?”
Ellie stepped between us. “The only liar here is you, Mom.”
It hit me so hard I actually rocked back a step.
Her face was red, eyes wet, jaw tight.
“When were you planning to tell me my grandmother was alive?”
For one second, I honestly did not understand the sentence.
Then Carol filled the silence with a soft sigh.
“I cannot tell you how painful it was,” she said, “when I finally reached out to Ellie, and she told me you had said I was dead.”
I turned to Ellie. “That is not what I said. I never told you she died.”
“Gone from our lives,” I shot back.
“Not dead.”
Ellie’s mouth twisted. “Now you’re changing it.”
“I am not changing it.” My voice cracked. “Ellie, is that what you thought I meant?
Why did you never ask?”
Something flickered in her face. Doubt. Just for a second.
Then Carol laid a hand on her shoulder, and it vanished.
“Get your hands off her!” I said.
“Stop!” Ellie shouted.
The sound cut through all three of us. Ellie looked at me like I’d broken something precious.
“I didn’t ask because I trusted you to tell me the truth. I didn’t ask because I saw how you always tensed up whenever I even mentioned my dad or Grandma.
I didn’t know you were letting me believe a lie. You already took away years I could’ve had with her,” she said. “You don’t get to keep doing this.”
My hands were shaking.
“I took her away from you because she is not safe.”
Carol gave a sad little laugh. “There you go. I told you she’d try to make me look bad.”
