She looked straight at Diane and said, very calmly, “I’m still sitting here, so you can stop talking like I already left.”
Nobody moved after that. You could hear the ice settle in her glass.
Diane gave this nervous little laugh and reached for the casserole dish like she could smooth the whole thing over with another serving spoon. “Mom, that’s not what I meant,” she said, but her voice had that sharp edge it always got when somebody stopped playing along with her version of things.
Mom didn’t let her interrupt this time. She said she was tired of people asking her questions only to have Diane answer them first. Tired of being corrected in front of everybody like she was confused all the time. Then she looked around the table and asked my nephew to repeat the question about the Maple Street house.
He did, quieter this time.
And Mom answered it herself. She talked about the creaky stairs, the neighbor who used to bring tomatoes over every summer, the dent Dad left in the garage backing up the Buick in 1989. Every detail came fast and easy. Not confused at all.
A couple people started looking at Diane differently after that. My brother-in-law stopped eating completely. Even Diane’s own son looked uncomfortable, like he was replaying a hundred conversations in his head all at once.
Then Mom said the part I don’t think anybody expected.
She said she’d told Diane three separate times she didn’t want to sell the Maple Street house yet, and every time Diane answered with, “We already discussed this, remember?”
Diane’s face went completely flat.
Mom picked her tea back up with both hands steady as anything and said, “I remember more than you think. I just got tired of fighting you every day.”