I said nothing. I just moved in on her, cold and steady, backing her toward the restaurant door.
"That fire—you set it. Don't think I didn't know."
It came out almost as a roar. No one alive could feel what I felt in that moment.
Because the person who'd destroyed me wasn't an enemy. It was my own mother.
I couldn't accept it. I really couldn't.
She froze, then lifted her head and stared at me with disbelief in her eyes, as though she'd never imagined I knew her secret.
My fists clenched hard, and the fury sitting in my chest wouldn't lift.
"Mom, why did you do this to me?"
"Ever since I was a kid I never understood why you played favorites. I'm the one you gave birth to, but your heart always leaned toward him. You made me give in to him every time, never let me refuse a single thing he asked."
"He wanted my room, and you switched us without even asking me. He ruined my homework, and before I could even yell at him you'd jump in and say he had no parents, that he was so pitiful—using my soft heart to get him off the hook."
"I was naive enough to think you just felt sorry for where he came from. I never dreamed he was your first love's son. The son of the man who drove my father to his grave."
"He's useless, he's a failure, so you burned my restaurant down. You wouldn't let me make it, just so he could feel at ease."
It tore out of me in a shout, and with every sentence the tears came down.
Her mouth opened. She wanted to explain something, but not a single word came.
I turned and walked toward the restaurant burned to ash, my heart in shreds.
I thought of opening day, all of them standing in the doorway clapping, smiling, wishing my business good fortune.
And all the while they'd already been cursing it in their hearts, praying it would die, praying it would never take off.
The human heart. The most sinister, treacherous thing in this world.
She came up behind me, looked at my back, and sighed.
"Since you already know, can Mom just apologize to you?"
"If I hadn't burned your restaurant, Elmer Delgado would have gotten so jealous he'd fall into depression."
"So he might get depressed, and that's why you burned my restaurant. But when I lost it, did you ever once think about me? Whether I might be crushed enough to kill myself?"
"You knew I opened that restaurant on a loan!"
If she weren't my mother, there was no way I'd have let her walk away from this.
"Get out. I don't want to see you."
But she didn't move. There wasn't a trace of guilt on her face, only that tangled look of someone with something she wanted to say and hadn't.
Seeing that look, I laughed coldly inside.
"Sid, there's something Mom wants to talk to you about."
I turned back and looked at her without any feeling at all.
She hesitated, then chose to speak anyway.
"Elmer's rented a storefront to buy into a bubble tea chain that's really blowing up right now, but he's a little short on cash—"
"So—"
"So you came to squeeze the last of the blood out of me to help him?"
I cut her off and finished it for her.
No one knew how fiercely the fury inside me was burning.
"You destroyed my restaurant. You bankrupted me. I can't even pay my workers' wages. How much do you have to favor him to still have the nerve to come ask me to help him?"
"I don't want to push this to the point of cutting family ties. Get out."
But right then, a voice reached us, disbelieving and full of guilt.
"Mom, is what my brother said true?"
"Did you really set fire to his restaurant when it was doing the best it ever had?"
The moment my mother saw Elmer, it was as if she were looking at her dead lover. She hurried over at once and stood at his side.
Ella looked at me, then came over to comfort me.
"Sid, try to let it go."
"It's already burned, there's nothing to be done. You just have to accept it. She's your mother, after all. You can't cut ties with her over something like this."
"Why not?"
I turned and looked at her, and for some reason I was so sick of that hypocritical face of hers right now.
Then Elmer dropped to his knees in front of me with a thud.
"Brother, I'm sorry. I really never imagined Mom would do something like this for me!"
