“Tell me, baby—when did my being alive become the thing keeping you from your future?”
One torn half slipped lower in his fingers. He caught it against the table, flattening his palm over the paragraph he had refused to read.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Evelyn watched his hand. There was a pale scar near his thumb from a bicycle repair when he was twelve. She remembered holding that hand beneath the faucet while he insisted he wasn’t crying.
“Then tell me how you meant it.”
He drew out the chair opposite hers but didn’t sit.
“I thought you owned it outright.”
“I did.”
The answer stopped him more effectively than shouting could have.
Outside, a truck passed slowly along the gravel road. Evelyn waited until its engine faded before speaking again.
“Insurance paid a great deal. There were things it didn’t pay. Travel. Lodging. Months when you couldn’t work. Keeping your apartment so you would have somewhere familiar to come home to.”
“You should have told me.”
“Yes,” she said. “When you were well enough, I should have.”
He looked up, almost relieved to have found something she had done wrong.
“But you didn’t ask about my bills today,” she continued. “You asked for my house.”
His relief disappeared.
He sat down at last, the torn letter between them. The kitchen seemed smaller with both of them seated, their knees nearly touching beneath the table.
“How much?”
Evelyn gave him the remaining balance.
He stared past her toward the window. She saw him calculating. She knew the difference between the look he wore when he was worried about her and the one he wore when numbers disappointed him.
“What have you already done?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Look at me.”
He did, but only briefly.
Evelyn folded her hands together so he wouldn’t see the tremor starting in them.
“What have you promised somebody?”
His phone vibrated against the tabletop.
Neither of them moved.
It vibrated again, turning slightly on the smooth wood. The screen brightened with a message long enough for Evelyn to read the first line.
Did she sign? We need the property sorted before Friday.
Her son turned the phone facedown.
Evelyn closed her eyes.
“Who thinks my house is theirs?”
“Nobody owns anything. There isn’t a contract on the house.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, then admitted he had planned to invest in a small equipment business. He had put down a deposit from his savings. To finance the rest, he had expected to borrow against the farmhouse once she transferred it.
“You offered something you didn’t have.”
“I thought we could work it out.”
“And where was I in this arrangement?”
“You could have stayed here.”
