Chapter 10
Miriam’s voice came through the speaker, steady enough to make the news sound worse.
“The petition doesn’t change who controls the property,” she said. “But it could delay closing while the claim is reviewed.”
Vance stood beside his desk, one hand resting on his cane. “And if we push ahead before the dispute is addressed, Constance can argue the trust ignored a challenge. That could make an expensive mess for everyone.”
“Even if she’s wrong?”
“Especially if she’s wrong loudly,” Miriam said.
I looked down at the folder in front of me. The papers were still, the ink dry, the house they described somewhere across town behind a new lock. Yet it felt as if Constance had reached through the page and put her hand around my throat.
“What does the buyer need?” I asked.
“Certainty,” Vance said. “Or enough evidence to believe the uncertainty can be resolved.”
My phone buzzed against the table.
A message from the buyer’s representative appeared on the screen. The buyer was reviewing the petition and needed an update before deciding whether to keep the offer open.
I set the phone facedown.
“Then we give them one,” I said.
Vance watched me carefully. “We give them what we can substantiate. We don’t promise a result.”
The distinction mattered. I hated that it mattered. I wanted to say the house was ours to sell, that Constance had lied, that my grandmother had made her wishes plain. Instead, I sat with the fear that doing the right thing could still cost my children what their great-grandmother had meant to protect.
At home, Theo and Sam were at the kitchen table, building a city from wooden blocks. Their elbows bumped, and a tower leaned, then held.
My phone rang. Lauren.
I answered before I could decide whether I wanted to hear her voice.
“I saw what Mom posted,” she said.
So had I. Constance’s post had already traveled through the family: Adeline is stealing the house from the people who belong there. She’d added a photograph of the stone front, the one with the climbing ivy and the windows my father used to wash every spring.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said.
Behind her, I could hear wind and the distant clank of a ship’s bell.
“Are you calling to apologize, or to tell me what she says next?”
“Both, probably.” She took a shaky breath. “I’m at the next port. I have the tablet.”
Vance leaned toward the speaker. “Lauren, this is Alistair Vance. We need you to preserve the original messages and send them to me without editing or deleting anything.”
“I can do that.”
“Can you show me what’s on it?”
A pause. Then Lauren’s camera came on. She sat in a bright, crowded terminal with the tablet balanced on her knees. Her face looked smaller on the screen, the bravado she’d worn in every family photograph stripped away.
“I’m going to share it,” she said. “I’m not hiding it anymore.”
She turned the camera toward the tablet. Vance guided her through the screen share, and soon the email thread was visible on his monitor. The old email was there, along with messages that followed it. Lauren forwarded the originals to him, then sent copies of the messages she’d saved from Constance.
I couldn’t read every line from where I sat. I could see Lauren’s thumb tremble as she tapped send.
“Mom told me I’d have to back her up,” she said. “She said everyone would think she was lying if I didn’t.”
“Did she tell you that before or after she said Grandma promised you the house?” I asked.
Lauren closed her eyes briefly. “Before the cruise. She said I should act like it was already settled.”
The words settled between us.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted to believe it was true.” Lauren looked straight at me. “And because she said you’d take everything if you knew.”
I was angry enough to feel it in my fingertips. But beneath the anger was a tired, aching recognition: Constance had handed Lauren a story and told her it was a gift.
“You handed me the story, too,” I said.
“I know.”
Vance asked Lauren to keep the tablet safe and send the original files. She nodded and did it while we watched. When the final message arrived in his inbox, he opened it and checked the file names, careful not to announce more than he could verify.
Lauren didn’t ask me to forgive her. That, at least, was different.
“I’ll cooperate,” she said. “If she comes after me, I’ll still tell the truth.”
The call ended with no grand promise, no sudden sisterly embrace across the ocean. Just Lauren alone beneath the terminal lights, holding a tablet that had become heavier than it looked.
My phone started ringing again.
Then again.
A cousin said Constance had told everyone I was throwing her out to punish Lauren. An aunt asked how I could take a home from “the family.” Someone I hadn’t spoken to in years left a voicemail about the shame I was bringing on my father’s memory.
I stood by the kitchen counter, listening while my sons built their city. Their towers rose and fell. None of them knew what strangers were saying about their mother.
I wanted to tell every caller what Constance had done. I wanted to lay out the messages, the false claim, the debt she’d tried to attach to a house that wasn’t hers. But the truth wasn’t mine to broadcast half-verified just because I was being accused in public.
I put the phone on silent.
Vance called back a few minutes later.
“Lauren has sent the material,” he said. “We’ll preserve it and have it reviewed. It may help, but it doesn’t settle the petition today.”
“I understand.”
I didn’t. Not really. I understood the words; I couldn’t yet make my body believe the house could still be lost.
At five, the buyer’s representative sent a second message. The buyer would not keep waiting indefinitely. The offer could be withdrawn if the title dispute remained unresolved.
I read it once. Then I read it again, as if the deadline might soften on the second pass.
Miriam called a moment later. “The buyer has set a final deadline,” she said. “Resolve the title dispute by Friday at noon, or the offer expires.”
Outside the window, evening gathered against the glass. At the table, Theo’s wooden city stood intact, a tiny bright place balanced on four careful blocks.
I opened my email and forwarded the deadline to Vance.
May you like
Then I looked at the screen, at the words that could undo everything we were trying to protect.
Friday at noon.
