My mother did not set a trap. That was what I expected when I walked into her house, still angry about the envelopes Marguerite had taken. I imagined a clever reveal, a spreadsheet, or a public accounting. My mother was not that woman, and I had underestimated her.She cooked a roast. She seated Marguerite at the head of the table, poured her wine, and asked about her own wedding. Not the missing money. Not the envelopes. She asked about 1979, the man she married, and the reception she remembered. Marguerite drank three glasses and began telling a story none of us had ever heard.
At her wedding, her mother-in-law had taken every gift envelope. She had stood beside the gift table, emptied everything into a handbag, and called it repayment. Her new husband said nothing. Marguerite spent the first year broke, humiliated, and too ashamed to tell her family.
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