Chapter 6
The clerk’s name was Allison Price.
I remembered hearing it on Mara’s first call to the title company. Allison had been the person who assured us the sale was on hold.
“She didn’t send the revision from her work account,” Mara said. “The company is investigating how her name got attached.”
Ortiz had asked for internal access records. I wanted an answer immediately. Instead, I went to work and spent three hours looking at a design I couldn’t concentrate on.
My manager, Priya, closed the office door.
“Go home,” she said. “The team can cover today.”
“I can’t keep leaving.”
“You’ve covered for all of us. Let us do it once.”
I told her enough to explain why I’d been distracted. She didn’t ask for every detail. She helped move my deadline and sent me home.
When I arrived, Mom and Noah were in the yard planting sunflowers. The sight slowed my breathing.
I changed clothes and joined them.
Noah gave me three seeds. “These are yours. Don’t put them too close together.”
For ten minutes, the only thing I had to get right was the distance between small holes in the earth.
The following afternoon, Ortiz called. Allison had not sent the revised paper. Owen had obtained an old template carrying her name and used a separate email address that looked similar to the company’s.
“He wanted the receiving office to think the hold had been cleared,” Ortiz said.
“Would it have worked?”
“The attempt was flagged. The records will be part of the case.”
I thanked her. Then I sat with the knowledge that Owen had kept pushing after he knew the owner had objected.
Vanessa gave her new statement that week. Ortiz told me only what affected my safety: Vanessa acknowledged knowing I had not agreed to sell, and she confirmed that Owen and Curtis expected money from the transaction.
I felt no relief. I had spent three years wondering whether Vanessa wanted to be part of my family. Now I knew she had listened to us make plans for Noah’s room while helping someone prepare a notice to empty it.
Mom asked whether I wanted to talk about her.
“I want to understand when she changed,” I said.
“Maybe she didn’t change all at once.”
“Does that make it better?”
“No,” Mom answered. “I think it explains why you didn’t see it.”
We sat on the porch after Noah went to bed. I told her I had been lonely when I met Vanessa. Noah was five. I worked late and worried I wasn’t enough for him. Vanessa made dinner when I was exhausted. She remembered his favorite book. She made it easy to imagine the three of us together.
“You weren’t foolish to want help,” Mom said.
“I brought her into his life.”
“You also listened when something was wrong. That matters to him now.”
The next morning, Curtis came to the house despite the order keeping him away from Noah. He stopped on the sidewalk, outside the gate. I stepped onto the porch and called Ortiz before speaking to him.
“Noah isn’t here,” I said. He was at school.
Curtis looked worse than he had at Christmas. “I didn’t come for him. I need you to tell your lawyer I was misled.”
“Then speak to your own lawyer.”
“Owen promised he could get me what I was owed.”
“You took the money for your share five years ago.”
“You knew the house would rise in value.”
“I hoped it would be a home for Noah.”
Curtis’s eyes moved past me to the doorframe inside the hall. He had grown up with our old height marks there too.
“Mom told me she doesn’t want to see me,” he said.
“She told you to stop calling until she’s ready.”
“I’m still her son.”
“Yes. And she gets to decide when she talks to you.”
He stepped closer to the gate. “Daniel, I didn’t think they’d throw you out. Owen said the sale would never really finish. He only needed the paperwork to get an advance.”
I stared at him.
“You helped a man impersonate me for a deal you say wouldn’t finish?”
Curtis looked away. He had no answer.
Ortiz arrived while he was still there. She spoke with him on the sidewalk. I went inside. When Mom came home later, I told her exactly what he had said.
“He keeps asking us to believe he didn’t understand,” she said. “He understood enough to hide it.”
I nodded.
A letter arrived from Curtis’s attorney the next day. Curtis wanted to cooperate with investigators. He also wanted me to consider a private settlement about the old house sale.
Mara read it and shook her head.
“The criminal investigation and the property records need to be resolved on their own terms,” she said. “You don’t owe him a new bargain.”
May you like
I went home and put the old sale agreement back in the drawer. For years I had taken it out whenever Curtis accused me of cheating him. I knew what it said.
I no longer needed to prove the same thing to him at every family dinner.
