Dynasty

“Tell them where their money went.”

My mother said it before I had taken my jacket off. She had put the good chairs around the dining table, including the one she ordinarily kept in her bedroom for no purpose except telling people not to sit in it. A woman I recognized stood beside that chair. She hadn't touched the plate of food in front of her.

“Mama, what is this?” I put my keys beside the bowl she used for mail. My sister's car had been in the driveway, but Akosua was nowhere in the room. “You asked me to come alone.”

“And you did. Sit down.”

“Let him stand,” the woman said. “I'm tired of sitting in rooms waiting for somebody to explain.”

Regina Bell had worn the same expression across a settlement table after her son died. I knew her name. I knew her son's name, too, although I had worked hard not to say it in my mother's house.

“Mrs. Bell, I wasn't expecting—”

“No. I can see that.” She lifted a white envelope from the table. “Your mother said she'd put money aside. She said somebody outside the company would handle it. Now that woman says the money she was meant to receive isn't available.”

Adwoa's dining room smelled of fish stew and the furniture polish she still insisted on using herself. My brother's old graduation picture hung above Regina's head. He looked sixteen and furious about the tie. Everybody in that room had passed beneath our pictures to get to the table.

“Who told you the money wasn't there?” I asked.

“The woman your mother hired to manage it,” said a man near the window. “Do you need her number, or can you call your own people?”

I knew him, too. Terrence Moss had owned a small trucking business until a disputed equipment claim and a family loan put his yard in somebody else's name. Our company's name had been on enough of the paper to keep him awake. Mine had been on a polite letter at the end.

“I'm not asking you to do my work for me.”

“Well, that's a relief. I've already done quite a bit.”

My mother moved my keys away from the mail bowl. She hated keys on polished wood. She could accuse me of stealing from a roomful of people and still protect the finish.

“Two point four million. That is what is missing.”

“Missing from which account?”

“The restitution account.”

“I know what you mean. I need the actual account.”

Regina let out a tired laugh. “Now we're getting somewhere. Is this the part where there are several kinds of missing?”

“There are several kinds of account. If I'm going to find the money, I need to know which one.”

“Nobody asked you to find it,” my mother said. “I asked you to explain.”

I took my phone out. Akosua's name was already on the screen from a message I hadn't opened in the car. Don't sign anything at Mother's. That was all it said.

I called her. Through the open doorway behind my mother, I heard her ringtone in the kitchen.

“Come in here,” I said into the phone.

She appeared carrying a glass of water. “I've been in here. Mother asked me to leave while she spoke to everybody.”

“She seems to have missed the speaking part.”

“No. You came in at the interesting part.”

My sister set the water in front of Regina. Not in front of me. She had changed out of her office shoes into the slippers my mother kept for her under a kitchen chair, and that small comfort irritated me more than it should have.

“Did you move the money?” I asked her.

“We need to examine the restrictions on the account before we make an announcement.”

Terrence pushed his untouched plate away. “There's the other kind of missing.”

“You are entitled to information,” Akosua told him. “You are also entitled to correct information. I won't give you one without the other.”

“Then give us both,” Regina said.

My mother reached toward the envelope, but Regina kept it under her hand. The other people at the table watched the little struggle without pretending not to see. A former warehouse cleaner sat beside her husband. A man with a cane had folded his cap into his lap. My mother had invited people we ordinarily discussed one at a time.

“Who else has access?” I asked.

Akosua took her phone from the pocket of her skirt. “Not on a speaker call in this room. We can give the administrator written authorization to discuss the account with each claimant's adviser.”

“There was supposed to be money,” Regina said. “Not authorization to have a conversation about money.”

“I agree,” my sister said, and for once she had no second sentence.

My mother pulled out a chair for me. I stayed where I was.

“Mama, did you authorize any transfer?”

“I authorized payments to these people.”

“That wasn't my question.”

“It is my answer.”

My phone vibrated with Camille's name. She was taking Eli to pick up a replacement mouthpiece for his school instrument. We had argued about whether it was lost or stolen, which in our house meant arguing about whether I had listened when he told me the case latch was broken. I silenced the call. Regina watched me do it.

People had come to this house for help before. A child needed school fees. A brother needed work. A business had survived a flood and couldn't survive waiting for the people who were meant to pay for the damage. My mother listened in this room, asked questions from that chair and decided how much of her answer should be a gift. There was always food. People left saying they didn't know what they would have done without her.

I liked hearing it. My own childhood had included men who spoke to my father as though he should be grateful to be kept waiting. My mother learned their names and made sure we didn't need them forever. Buying the house had mattered more to her than buying a larger office. It gave her a place where visitors waited for her, where the chairs were hers and nobody could tell her she was taking too long.

The visitors at this table knew that version of her. Some had eaten here before their relationship with us became something they took to an adviser. Terrence had brought his wife to a dinner after I got him work that paid enough to catch up a repair bill. He had called me brother while holding a plate my mother filled twice. Later I helped press the sale of his yard. He stopped visiting, but my mother still asked after his wife as if one relationship could remain untouched by the other.

I had been able to come home from a settlement with a fee in my pocket and hear somebody call it useful work. I had sat at this table, reached for food and told a funny version of a difficult man's surrender. My mother laughed. My sister asked whether the money had cleared. My brother complained that we were talking about work again. It had felt like a family evening, which it was. It had also been the room where the price of our comfort disappeared into the serving dishes.

Now the people who had paid some of that price were sitting beneath our pictures. My mother had called them here without letting me choose the order in which they spoke. I wanted to be angry at her for it. I also wanted the room back the way it had been before I came through the door.

“Go ahead,” Regina said. “We can wait while you answer your wife. We've had practice.”

“I can call her back.”

“That is what all of you say.”

Akosua's phone rang next. She read the screen, answered, then turned toward the front door.

“Felix? Where are you?” Her voice changed. “Don't get out. Felix, stay in the car.”

The sound outside was a horn pressed down and held. I was past her before she finished speaking. My mother called my name, and a chair scraped behind me as Terrence stood.

Felix's old sedan had stopped with one wheel on the edge of the driveway. The driver's door was open. He was leaning across the seat, one foot caught underneath him, his shirt dark and wet at the side.

“Call an ambulance,” I told Akosua. She was already talking into her phone.

Felix tried to straighten. “Kojo. Close the—”

“Stay still.” I knelt outside the open door and put my hand where his hand was pressing his shirt. Blood pushed warm between our fingers. “Keep looking at me. You've come all this way to park like an idiot, so don't fall asleep now.”

“Your mother. She'll complain.”

“She's already complained. You're late for it.”

Akosua gave the dispatcher the address. My mother came down the steps with a clean towel. She had brought the thick one from her bathroom, the one the grandchildren weren't allowed to use.

“Here.” She passed it to me without looking at the stain spreading across his shirt. “Felix, don't move.”

“Pressure,” Akosua said, listening to her phone. “Keep pressure on it. They're coming.”

“I am.”

“I know. I'm telling them.”

Regina stood behind her. “Does he have a weapon in there?”

Felix shook his head, then stopped with his mouth open.

“Don't make him answer,” I said.

“I'm telling the dispatcher what they need before anybody comes running at this car.” Regina took Akosua's free arm and spoke clearly toward the phone. “Wounded man. No weapon we've seen. People helping him. Nobody here is threatening anybody.”

My mother made a sound I had never heard from her. I kept both hands over the towel. Felix's fingers caught my wrist with surprising strength.

“The copy,” he whispered.

“Leave it.”

“They changed—”

“Felix. Look at me.” I leaned close enough that he didn't have to turn his head. “You don't have to tell me anything. Let them help you.”

Terrence came out with the front-door key in his hand. “I'm opening the gate all the way.”

Terrence stopped at the open driveway with the key still in his hand. He put it away and started moving the other cars instead. Akosua tossed him hers. My mother stood where blood had dripped onto the concrete, her clean hands empty now.

The siren reached us through the traffic. Felix's grip loosened, and I said his name again. I could feel how hard he was working to breathe.

“Mabel.”

“We'll call her.”

“Not like this.”

“I'll talk to her. You hear me? I'll talk to her.”

He shut his eyes, and the paramedic coming up beside me told me to move only when she was ready. I kept the towel in place while she cut his shirt. She asked questions I couldn't answer. Where was he shot? How long had he been bleeding? I knew the mileage on the car he drove, knew which drivers he wouldn't schedule together, knew he put sugar in coffee he called unsweetened. I didn't know where he'd been hurt.

I moved back when she told me. My hands looked as though they belonged to somebody who had done something terrible in my mother's driveway.

A police officer asked who owned the sedan. Another asked whether anyone had seen a car follow it. The man with the cane said he had been facing the window, but he hadn't been looking outside. Regina gave the officer her name. She didn't glance at me for permission.

Akosua stood beside the stretcher until a paramedic asked her to clear a path. “Which hospital?” she asked. She listened, repeated it back, then turned toward me. “I'll drive. You can't.”

My phone rang again. I pulled it out with the heel of my hand, leaving a dark mark across the case.

“Kojo?” Camille said. “What's going on? Your mother called and didn't say anything. I could hear somebody crying.”

“Felix has been shot. They're taking him to the hospital.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No. I'm going with Akosua.”

“I'll meet you. Tell your mother I'll meet you.”

The ambulance doors closed. My mother reached for me, then stopped at my wrists. I had blood beneath the band of my watch. She used the edge of her blouse to wipe one clean place on my arm.

“Who did this?” she asked.

I had spent most of my adult life finding an answer that would quiet her house. This time I didn't have one. Across the driveway, Regina stood beside the police officer with our envelope still tucked under her arm.

“I don't know,” I told my mother, and let her hear it.