Chapter 4: The House She Tried to Take
Christina didn’t answer right away. She reached for the folder on the coffee table and opened it with careful fingers, as if even the paper might be dangerous.
“This is the deed,” she said. “Mom kept a copy with the family records.”
The house had belonged to her mother before it belonged to any of us. Christina had told me that much over the years, but I’d never asked what her mother wanted done with it. I’d mistaken the house for a place we visited, not a promise someone had left behind.
Christina turned the copy toward me. Her mother’s name was there, along with the transfer that had made the house part of our family. The paper was faded at the creases, handled often enough to soften at the edges.
“She wanted Leo to have somewhere that was still his, no matter what happened,” Christina said. “A place he could come back to.”
I looked at the name at the top, then at my daughter. “I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.”
There was no anger in her voice. Somehow that made the words hurt more.
Rebecca sat across from us, the black USB drive beside her laptop. She’d copied the files so we wouldn’t have to keep opening the original. On the screen, the suspicious authorization sat among the other documents—my name and Florence’s, and that almost-right version of my signature.
I couldn’t stop looking at it.
“I’m calling Florence,” I said.
Christina’s shoulders tightened.
“Not to ask you to trust her,” I added. “I want to hear what she says about the original.”
After a moment, Christina nodded once.
Florence answered on the second ring.
“Jonathan.” Her voice was soft, familiar, and suddenly unbearable. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
“Where are the original papers?”
A pause, then a small breath. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“The authorization to sell the lakeside house.”
“Christina stole papers from my things, and now you’re calling to accuse me?”
“I’m asking where the originals are.”
“You’re asking because she told you to. You’re upset, and she knows how to use that.”
I looked at Christina. She was watching me, not the phone.
“Did you take the papers from her apartment?”
“Jonathan, she’s the one who had them. I went over there to talk, and she started digging through my things.”
“You went over there before the wedding.”
“I went because she was making accusations. You know how she gets when she’s decided someone is against her.”
My grip tightened around the phone. For years, that kind of sentence had been enough to make me hesitate—to look for some hidden explanation that would let me keep believing everyone was still on my side.
“Did Claude give you copies of my signature?”
The silence on the line changed. It lasted only a second, but I heard it.
“You’re letting Christina turn this into something it isn’t,” Florence said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re going to get while you’re acting like this.”
“Then give me the original authorization.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where is it?”
“I said I don’t have it.”
She sounded angry now, but beneath the anger was something colder: the confidence that she could still steer the conversation if she kept me reacting.
“Christina isn’t the one who has to answer for this,” I said. “You do.”
Florence gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “You’ve known me for two years. You think I’d risk everything for a house?”
I glanced at the forged signature again. “I don’t know what you’d risk.”
She hung up.
For a moment, none of us spoke. The old kitchen clock ticked above the doorway, each click too loud in the silence.
Rebecca leaned over the laptop. “There are more files.”
She opened a copied email attachment. A short appointment notice appeared, addressed to a buyer’s representative. The location was the lakeside property. The time was the following morning.
“Eight-thirty,” Rebecca said.
The words seemed to drain the warmth from the room. Until then, the house had been something taken from the past: a deed, a memory, a place Christina wanted Leo to keep. Now there was a time attached to losing it.
“Can they do that?” I asked.
Christina’s expression hardened. “I don’t know. I know somebody expects to move forward tomorrow.”
I had a dozen instructions ready. Call this person. Go there. Tell Rebecca to lock the doors. Each one formed in my mouth, and each one sounded like me taking over again.
I stopped.
“What do you need from me right now?”
Christina looked surprised—not softened, not reassured. Just surprised.
“I need you to listen,” she said. “And when what I tell you makes you feel stupid, don’t turn it into a reason to doubt me.”
The shame of it settled in my chest. I nodded.
“Okay.”
She held my gaze for another second, as if checking whether I meant it. Then she looked back at the screen.
Leo had been sitting on the rug with a small family photograph in his lap. He turned it over, then pointed at a man near the edge of the picture.
“Mr. Claude,” he said.
Christina rose from the couch. “You remember him?”
Leo nodded. His finger stayed on Claude’s smiling face.
“He came to our apartment.”
I crouched beside him. “When, buddy?”
“Before Florence was loud.” He thought about it, frowning with the effort of remembering. “Mommy said I should color.”
Christina went very still.
“Was he there with Mommy?” I asked gently.
Leo nodded again. Then he looked from me to Christina, searching our faces for an answer to a question he couldn’t quite ask.
I didn’t ask him to say more. His little hands had already done enough.
Rebecca closed the laptop halfway, then opened it again. “If Claude was there before Florence came, he had time to do something.”
“Or to get something,” Christina said.
Neither of us tried to fill in the blank. We didn’t know what he had done, only that he’d been inside her apartment before the confrontation—and that his involvement reached further back than we’d understood.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
May you like
A message from Florence lit the screen.
The buyer already has what he needs.
