“Alyssa…”
My mother’s voice sounded nothing like it had the night before.
Gone was the irritation.
Gone was the tired little sigh she used whenever I objected to being treated badly.
Gone was the certainty that Ethan could humiliate me and I would eventually return to my assigned position in the family: useful, quiet, forgiving.
I sat on the edge of the bed in my Naples hotel room and looked out through the open balcony doors.
“Yes?”
For a moment, she didn’t answer.
Behind her I could hear voices in the lobby of Villa Bellarosa.
A chair scraped.
Someone whispered Ethan’s name.
Then Mom said, “What is this?”
I knew exactly what she was looking at.
The Florence print shop had enlarged one page from my financial folder to four feet tall, mounted it behind clear acrylic, and placed it in a simple black frame.
At the top was the acknowledgment Ethan had signed before I transferred the largest portion of the wedding money.
The original wasn’t dramatic.
It was one page, mostly plain language, created because I’d grown tired of hearing Ethan describe every favor differently depending on who was listening.
When he needed the money, he called it an advance.
When I asked about repayment, he called it family helping family.
So I’d asked him to put the arrangement in writing.
The $77,000 was not recorded as a wedding gift.
It was money advanced by me for wedding expenses, repayable by Ethan according to the schedule we’d discussed after the wedding.
Mom had signed beneath him as guarantor after rolling her eyes and saying, “Fine.
If it’ll make you stop worrying.”
At the time, Ethan had grinned as he signed.
“You think I’m going to run away with the flowers?”
I remembered answering, “No.
I think people get strange when money is involved.”
Now that sentence was hanging four feet tall in front of him.
Well, not that sentence.
The signatures were enough.
“It’s the agreement you signed,” I told Mom.
“Why would you send this here?”
“You said I make things bigger than they need to be.
I thought bigger might help.”
Silence.
I heard Ethan in the background.
“Give me the phone.”
Mom whispered something to him.
He said it louder.
“Mom.
Give me the phone.”
A second later Ethan’s voice replaced hers.
“What the hell are you doing?”
That was Ethan.
Even scared, he preferred anger.
“Having breakfast,” I said.
“You sent some giant legal threat to my wedding hotel.”
“It’s not a threat.
It’s a copy of something you already signed.”
“Take it down.”
“I’m in Naples, remember?”
He stopped talking.
For the first time since I’d landed, I almost laughed.
Not because the situation was funny.
Because Ethan had spent twenty-four hours enjoying the idea that distance made me powerless.
