I crossed into the kitchen, picked up my phone from the counter, and dialed my sister Margaret. She answered on the second ring.
“Deb?”
“Margaret, I need you here. Now.”
“What happened?”
“That thing I asked you to quietly look into a few months back. Bring all of it. Bring whatever you have on property law and divorce too, just in case. I’ll explain everything once you get here. Please just drive, don’t ask me questions yet.”
There was a pause on the line, the particular kind of pause only a sister truly understands.
“So you finally know,” Margaret said softly.
“I finally know.”
“I’m already in the car. Give me twenty minutes.”
I hung up, walked back down the hall to the office, and stood looking at the framed deed for a long moment. A small, unfamiliar smile touched the corner of my mouth, and I realized, almost with surprise, that it was the first entirely honest expression my face had managed all morning.Margaret arrived within twenty minutes exactly, her canvas tote bag heavy with folders, her mouth already set in the hard, determined line I remembered clearly from our childhood, the one she used to wear right before she stood up for me on some playground or another.
“Show me everything,” she said, stepping past me straight into the kitchen without pausing to take off her coat.
I pulled down the box I kept on the top shelf of the office closet, years of quiet, careful organizing inside it. Deeds. Account statements. The inheritance paperwork from my father’s estate, still neatly clipped together the way the lawyer’s office had originally sent it. Margaret put on her reading glasses and began flipping through the pages methodically.
“The house was bought outright,” I told her. “With Dad’s money, after he passed.”
“And the deed itself?”
“My name. Just mine. Tyler signed off on it years ago, back when his bonus structure made that arrangement useful for tax purposes. I don’t think he ever actually read what he was signing.”
