Speaking of "little sneak."

Thoughts of seeing my mother brought an all too familiar creeping dread. I turned my shop's "Closed" sign toward the street and grabbed my carpetbag. As I reached for the doorknob, I saw the caked dirt under my fingernails. It would be noticed, for sure.

I decided to risk being a minute later to the meeting so that I could wash my hands and avoid the dirty fingers judgement. As I worked the soap suds under each nail, I took deep breaths, turned my attention away from Mother, away from Esther, and even away from Officer Miles Denton.

Instead, I focused on Dad.

When my father died last year, he left almost everything to me. And when I say almost everything, I mean all of their money, which was lots and lots of money, the title to his car, everything except my childhood home in Scarsdale. Since both of their names were on the deed, my mother, by virtue of having stayed married, legally inherited the house. She had to maintain it and pay the taxes on it, but the house itself was hers.

After the will was disclosed, my mother didn't speak to me for months. She contested the will, which I certainly understood, but when I tried to arrange a meeting with Dad's attorney to discuss it, Mother wouldn't return my calls. Or my texts. Or my emails. I just assumed this whole mess was a huge mistake, that by meeting with the lawyers together, we'd all get to the bottom of it.

Meanwhile, though, reaching out to Mother continued to be in vain.

Already wrapped in grief, I was left with no parents at all.

One day while I was walking in the Village, I saw my dad's very closest friend. His name was Archibald Munch, a name that still makes me want to giggle when I say it out loud. I call him Uncle Archie which usually makes his eyes fill up.

Drinking pals, and originally roommates at Yale, they both had moved to New York after graduation. They fished for Striped Bass at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, bowled in the same league, golfed in the Hamptons. I had spent dozens of after-dinner hours listening to the two of them talk about their glory days back in college.

We did the big bear hug thing, that day we ran into each other, and went to the White Horse Tavern for a hamburger. Over beers, Uncle Archie spilled the beans on the whys and wherefores of my dad's decision about changing his will.

Turns out Mother was seeing another man, but she wouldn't consider a divorce because of "how it would look." When Uncle Archie told me that, I snorted with ironic laughter.

Since my mom is black and my dad is white, "how things looked" to the privileged residents of Scarsdale, New York, was exactly what our family had been up against all my life. It most certainly had never mattered to either of them before.

In fact, my mother seemed to actually enjoy the way we looked to the white bread Scarsdale types. We were different. She liked it that way. Maybe the whole cheating, divorcing thing was too similar to what other people in the neighborhood were doing, and she just needed to be different, like we had always been?

I wondered if I'd ever know.

"Your dad wanted you to have the world, Miss Madeline," said Uncle Archie that day in the White Horse. "And the closest he could come to that was to give you his world when he passed. To Tom Bridges! You got the last word in with that little sneak of a wife, man!" He lifted his beer and we toasted to my father's memory, one of many sad toasts that day.

Things would work out, I was sure. At least today we would have an opportunity to be in the same room together.

I wanted the time with her. I wanted to regain some sense of family, and I was ready to compromise, just a little.

Just a little, because my heart broke for my father, who had spent his whole life working to make his girls comfortable, more than comfortable. I wanted to respect his final wishes, while still giving a nod to the woman who had taught me the difference between ginger and ginseng, between rosemary and Rose of Sharon.

Mother wasn't a witch...well, not the kind of witch I was, certainly. But she had taught me everything she knew about gardening, so for that, I was grateful. Surely some kind of compromise just had to be reached.

She had finally relented for some reason, had agreed with her attorney to meet with me, and here I was, running late. The whole Esther situation, plus the bonus Miles Denton daydream had completely derailed me.

The business of the Mother meeting was to get things about the house ironed out once and for all. More importantly, I was planning on focusing on my relationship with my mother throughout the meeting, sending out healing spells and the very best intentions so that we could start to repair what had gotten messed up. I'd had a bitter taste on my tongue for almost a year now and had grown tired of it.

It was time for growth, time for forgiveness, time to move forward.

Who knew, though? My mother might not be interested in making nice with me after all; maybe her attorney had found some loophole and she was about to scrape everything back into her till, in which case I would, like this morning's tea leaves had predicted, lose something once and for all.

Not just Dad's estate, but my relationship with my mother.

Yes, I had sort of dipped into the inheritance, in a manner of speaking. Since Mother was contesting the will, the actual money wasn't accessible, but with Dad's assets associating with my broke little social security number, I had been able to get my hands on a juicy new credit card right after my lunch with Uncle Archie. Going on the hunch that Mother couldn't win back the entire estate, I knew I could make good on the card once the dust had settled.

Plus, I had sold his Audi.

I thanked his spirit every time I paid my rent without wringing my hands over the whereabouts of my next meal. I thanked him when I helped my friends pay their utility bills, or when I treated them to dinner or an unexpected glass of wine. I thanked him when I picked up some surprise dessert for Ms. Esther, a baklava here, a ladyfinger there. This promise of a nest egg had also given me the freedom to help a few people who wandered around my neighborhood looking hungry.

Somehow, I had to find a way to make Dad proud of me while still letting him get the last word in with Mother.