I turned toward her, my heart pounding.
“Mom, did you take the money from his desk?”
She was holding her swollen cheek with both hands, tears filling her eyes.
“No, sweetie,” she whispered. “I swear to God I didn’t touch it.”
Brandon gave a harsh, cruel laugh.
“Oh, sure. So those hundred-dollar bills just magically grew legs and walked right out of the front door by themselves?”
Margaret tried to explain through her tears that she had only been cleaning the furniture.
She said she had opened the drawer briefly to wipe dust from the edges, but she insisted she had never touched anything inside it.
Brandon refused to listen to a word.
Instead, he immediately launched into a bitter rant about everything he supposedly hated about having her in the apartment.
She made too much noise when she cooked early in the morning.
She used too much butter in her food.
