Chapter 5 - My Mother’s Version
Mom asked to meet without Dad.
I chose a diner in Old Greenwich.
Public.
Neutral.
She arrived wearing sunglasses even though it was cloudy.
“Your father says you’re trying to ruin him.”
“What do you say?”
She removed the glasses.
“I think you deserved the truth fifteen years ago.”
I waited.
Mom confirmed she had postpartum depression after Sienna’s birth.
She had also been prescribed a sedating anti-anxiety medication.
But the night of the fire, she said, she had consumed one glass of wine at dinner.
“Was there a candle?”
“Yes.”
“Did you leave it burning?”
She looked down at her coffee.
“I thought I had.”
That answer made no sense.
Mom explained that after the fire, Dad repeatedly told her she must have forgotten it.
She was exhausted.
Medicated.
Traumatized by seeing one daughter burned and another carried out unconscious.
Eventually, she believed him.
“What do you remember?”
“Smelling something hot before I went upstairs.”
“Smoke?”
“Plastic.”
She had told Dad.
He said renovations sometimes smelled strange.
She checked Sienna, returned downstairs, and took her prescribed medication because she was anxious.
Fifteen minutes later, I heard Sienna screaming.
“Why didn’t the smoke alarm go off?”
Mom began crying.
“That question kept me awake for years.”
She told me something else.
After the fire, Dad hired a private investigator—not to determine what happened.
To find out which contractors and employees were talking to reporters.
“Why?”
“Whitmore Residential had three major projects using the same electrical subcontractor.”
Dad feared lawsuits and investor panic.
Mom looked at my uncovered arms.
“Every time someone asked about your scars, he heard another question about that house.”
My parents had taught me to hide because my body reminded people of the night Dad most wanted forgotten.
May you like
But Mom still hadn’t answered the hardest question.
“Why did you help him?”
