Chapter 5: Thomas’s Version
The driveway was empty when Emily reached the house. She stopped at the bottom of the steps, one hand beneath her stomach, the other gripping the strap of her tote. Through the front window, a lamp threw a thin gold stripe across the curtains.
She knocked once.
The door opened before she could knock again. Thomas stood there in shirtsleeves, his gray hair rumpled and his expression alert.
“You came.”
“You asked me to.”
He glanced past her toward the street. “Kevin’s gone. He said he had an errand, but I didn’t ask him to stay.”
Emily followed Thomas inside. The house smelled of coffee and cedar, familiar from holidays when she’d first been welcomed as Kevin’s wife. Tonight, the warmth of it only sharpened her unease.
Thomas led her to the small sitting room, not the kitchen where anyone could walk in unnoticed. He shut the door himself.
“Show me what you found,” he said.
Emily pulled the manila envelope from her tote and took out Ruth’s copies. She kept the investigator’s report tucked beneath them. The affair mattered, but she couldn’t let it take over the conversation she’d come to have.
“Your house is listed as transferred to a company,” she said, laying the filing on the coffee table. “There’s a lien against it, too. Kevin’s named as the company’s manager.”
Thomas studied the pages without reaching for them.
“Did you sign this?”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly Emily felt her shoulders tense. Thomas noticed.
“I’m not guessing,” he said. “I know what I signed, and I know what I didn’t.”
He lifted the top page. His gaze moved carefully over the printed lines, then stopped at a name. One finger pressed the paper flat.
“Kevin said he was handling some things for me.”
“What things?”
“Bills. Appointments. A little paperwork.” Thomas looked up. “That isn’t the same as giving him my house.”
Emily leaned forward. “Ruth found an authorization connected to the filing. It looked like permission to manage the property while you were recovering.”
Thomas’s mouth tightened. “That’s what I gave him.”
The admission landed harder than Emily expected. She’d imagined a blank denial, a clean answer. Instead, the truth opened another door.
“When was this?”
“After I had surgery. I was foggy from medication, and your father-in-law’s friends kept asking me to sign things I couldn’t read without my glasses.” He gave a humorless smile. “Kevin offered to sort out the bills and make sure the place was maintained.”
“And you trusted him.”
“He was my son.” Thomas looked down again. “I trusted him with a narrow job. Pay the bills. Deal with repairs if I couldn’t. That’s what I remember agreeing to.”
He set the page on the table, his hand still resting on it.
“I did not authorize a sale,” he said. “I did not agree to borrow money against this home. I would remember that.”
Emily let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. The room seemed to settle around the words, but the papers remained between them, stark and official-looking.
“Can you prove what you agreed to?”
“I kept my copy.” Thomas’s eyes hardened. “If Kevin thinks I’m too old to know what I signed, he’s made a serious mistake.”
There was no tremor in his voice. He wasn’t asking Emily to decide for him or to tell him what to do. He was choosing what to share, and anger was beginning to show through his carefulness.
“I called because of tomorrow,” he said. “The meeting wasn’t supposed to be about a company or a loan.”
“What was it supposed to be about?”
Thomas stood and walked to the window. Beyond the glass, the dark lawn sloped toward the old maple at the edge of the property. One of its branches scraped softly along the siding.
“I wanted to talk about the house,” he said. “What I can keep up with. Whether I need to make changes before I get too stubborn to make them.”
He turned back to her.
“And I wanted to talk about the baby.”
Emily blinked. “The baby?”
“I thought I might set aside something for the child. Not a fortune. Just enough to make the first year a little easier, if you and Kevin needed help.” His expression softened. “I wanted to ask what would actually help you. A crib, maybe. Childcare. I didn’t want to hand you something you didn’t need and call it generosity.”
For a moment, Emily couldn’t speak. She’d prepared herself to hear about signatures and dates, about a house treated like an asset anyone could move around. She hadn’t prepared for Thomas’s careful, ordinary kindness.
“I didn’t know,” she managed.
“I hadn’t told Kevin. I wanted us all together.” Thomas’s gaze held hers. “I wanted you there because you’re the baby’s mother. Not because anyone needed you to sign something.”
Her throat tightened. She looked down at the edge of the envelope and pictured the two sleeper tickets on the train, the empty place Kevin had left her. She’d been made to feel like an inconvenience before she even reached this house.
“Thank you,” she said.
Thomas’s expression shifted, gentler but not pitying. “You shouldn’t have had to find out this way.”
“I’m glad I did.”
A car rolled onto the gravel outside.
Thomas moved to the window. “That’s Kevin.”
Emily gathered the copies, but Thomas put out a hand.
“Let me hold them.”
He took the top sheets and stood with them in his hand as footsteps approached the porch. Emily stayed where she was. She didn’t try to hide behind him, and he didn’t try to send her away.
The front door opened.
Kevin’s voice carried down the hall, warm and easy. “Dad? I’m back.”
Thomas didn’t move. Emily felt her pulse climb as Kevin appeared in the sitting-room doorway, wearing the same practiced smile he used when he wanted a room to settle around him.
Then his eyes dropped to the papers in his father’s hand.
May you like
The smile vanished.
“What did you tell him?” Kevin asked Emily.
