Chapter 2
Mom snatched the agreement off the desk.
“You don’t get to stand in his house and manipulate her,” she said.
Ruth kept her hands at her sides. “I haven’t asked Emily to do anything.”
“Funny. You show up the morning after the funeral and start telling us what Dad did and didn’t sign.”
“He asked me to be here.”
Mom gave a short, bitter laugh. “Of course he did.”
Behind her, Dad clapped his hands at the movers. “Keep going. We’re not paying you to stand around.”
The men shifted toward the dining room. One had already wrapped a moving blanket around Grandpa’s narrow walnut cabinet, the one where he kept seed catalogs and old jars of screws. I could see the garden door beyond them, open to the gray morning and the wet, dark beds outside.
“What are you taking through there?” I asked.
“Cabinet,” one mover said, glancing at Dad. “He said it goes.”
“It doesn’t.”
Dad’s mouth tightened. “Emily.”
I set the quilt over a chair and stepped into the doorway. “Nobody takes anything else out.”
The mover lowered his end of the cabinet. It bumped the floor with a dull, heavy sound. “I’m not looking to get in the middle of a family thing.”
“Then don’t,” I said. “Put it down.”
Mom held the document against her chest. “This is ridiculous. The house is ours now.”
“Then you shouldn’t be afraid of someone looking at the paper,” Ruth said.
Mom’s eyes flashed. “You already looked at it.”
“I looked at the signature.”
“Which you decided was fake.”
“I said Walter couldn’t have written it.”
Dad came closer, his voice dropping into the tone he’d used when he wanted a disagreement to sound like my fault. “You heard her, Emily. She’s trying to turn you against your own family.”
I stared at the hand he’d put on my arm the day before, the pressure of his fingers still remembered by my skin. “You did that without her help.”
His face changed. For a breath, I saw something like hurt. Then he looked past me at the movers.
“Take the cabinet through the front.”
One man reached for his end again.
I planted both feet between him and the garden door. My pulse thudded in my throat, but I held his gaze. “No.”
“Emily, move,” Dad said.
“No.”
The mover looked from me to Dad. “I need somebody to tell me who’s responsible here.”
“Me,” Ruth said. “And I’m telling you to leave the furniture where it is until this is settled.”
Mom let out a sharp breath. “You’re her attorney, not the owner.”
Ruth’s expression stayed level. “I know what I am.”
The room had gone quiet enough for the clock in Grandpa’s kitchen to tap out each second. Outside, a branch brushed the window. I thought of the garden beyond the door—Grandpa’s neat rows, the damp smell of turned earth, the beds he’d tended even when his knees hurt. My parents had been back for less than an hour, and already they were trying to carry his life out in pieces.
Ruth nodded toward the desk. “There’s a signature in Walter’s notebook from the year he signed the garden lease. Richard, you’ve seen him write his name.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dad said.
“You brought this document.”
Mom’s fingers tightened around the paper. “You don’t get to take it.”
“I don’t want to take it. Put it beside his notebook.”
For a moment Mom looked like she might tear it in half. Instead, she slapped it onto the desk.
Ruth opened the notebook to a page marked with a faded envelope. Grandpa’s name sat beneath a list of bean varieties, written in his familiar, blunt hand. I knew that signature. I’d seen it on birthday cards he’d addressed to me, on the grocery lists stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a tomato.
Ruth placed the agreement beside it.
The two signatures shared the same letters, but not the same person. Grandpa’s name had always leaned forward, as if it were in a hurry. The one on Mom’s paper stood stiff and careful. The final stroke curled upward in a flourish I’d never seen him make.
“That’s not his,” I said.
Mom’s jaw flexed. “You’re not an expert.”
“No,” Ruth said. “But I knew him. And this date is after his final hospital stay began.”
Dad’s eyes cut toward the document.
Ruth looked at him. “I visited him that week. He couldn’t have made that signature.”
Mom snatched the paper back. “You’re saying he was too sick to sign anything?”
“I’m saying he didn’t sign this.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“I’m not trying to prove it in this room.”
The words landed harder than a threat. Dad shifted, then reached for the movers’ attention again. “Front door. Now.”
I moved with the cabinet, keeping myself between it and the open path. The quilt slipped from the chair and pooled on the floor. I didn’t bend to pick it up.
The mover nearest me rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, I’m not carrying something past a person who’s standing in the way.”
“Then stop asking him to,” I said.
Dad stared at me. “You want to make this ugly?”
“It’s already ugly.”
Mom stepped close enough for me to smell her perfume, sweet and sharp beneath the dust of the room. “You think standing in a doorway gives you a right to this house?”
I held her gaze. “You told me to take my things and get out. I’m standing here with them.”
The words came out steadier than I felt. That seemed to anger her more than if I’d shouted.
From upstairs came the soft creak of a stair.
Brianna appeared at the bottom landing, pale beneath her makeup. She glanced at Mom, then at me, and seemed to lose her nerve. Mom turned toward the movers.
“Everyone take a break,” she said. “Richard, come with me.”
“Diane—” Ruth began.
Mom lifted a hand. “I said we’re taking a break.”
Dad followed her toward the hall, muttering into his phone. The movers backed away from the cabinet, one after the other. No one looked comfortable. No one left.
Brianna crossed the room while Mom’s back was turned. Her shoulder brushed mine. Something cold and small pressed into my palm.
A brass key.
I curled my fingers around it.
May you like
Brianna’s face stayed pointed toward the floor. Her voice was barely more than breath.
“That opens a place Mom doesn’t know about.”
