“Get out by Friday, Mama. Rebecca wants this house.”
Jake snarled the words at Evelyn, his elderly mother, as if the home she lived in already belonged to someone else.
Evelyn looked up at him without moving. Her hands trembled over an envelope, but she kept her fingers pressed to it.
Outside, the peach tree from Jake’s childhood was in bloom. Its branches filled the window behind him while he waited for her to answer.
“Dad left it to me,” he said.
Evelyn’s eyes dropped to the envelope. She knew what was inside. Jake seemed to notice only that she was holding something back.
She lifted it slightly, as though she might hand it over herself. Her fingers shook too badly to keep the edge steady.
Jake snatched it before she could speak.
The paper scraped against her fingertips. Evelyn drew her hands back and folded them together. Jake opened the envelope right in front of her.
For an instant, he looked certain. He had made his demand; now he had the paper that would settle it.
But the deed did not say what he expected.
It bore only Evelyn’s name.
Jake stared at the page. He looked for his own name, then checked it again. Evelyn said nothing. She watched him read while her empty hands shook in her lap.
Then something beneath the deed caught his attention.
A photograph.
In it, a shivering boy stood on the doorstep of this very house. He looked small beside the door.
Jake held the picture closer. For a moment, he studied the boy instead of the deed. Outside the window, the peach tree was still blooming.
Evelyn watched his face. A moment ago, he had been telling her to leave this house by Friday. Now he was holding a photograph of someone who had once stood outside it.
“I found you there,” she whispered.
Jake lifted his eyes from the picture. Evelyn’s voice was quiet, but she didn’t take the words back.
“Your birth mother was seventeen and homeless,” she said. “I promised her you’d always have a roof.”
He looked down at the photograph again. The boy on the doorstep was him.
For the first time since he had entered the room, Jake said nothing. The deed was still in his hand, and so was the picture. Evelyn waited, unable to tell which one he would look at next.
That was when the doorbell rang.
A woman’s voice came from outside.
“Evelyn? Is he here?”
Evelyn didn’t go to the door. She kept her eyes on Jake, who still held the papers he had snatched from her hands.
“Will you turn her away, too?”
The woman was waiting outside. Jake had not answered either of them.
The bell rang again, and the envelope slipped from Jake’s hand.
It landed on the floor between them, open like a mouth.
Jake moved toward the front hall, but Evelyn’s voice stopped him.
“Don’t open that door until you know what you’re willing to hear.”
His shoulders tightened. Through the glass beside the door, a woman’s shadow shifted beneath the porch light. Rebecca stood with one hand raised, her pale coat bright against the darkening yard.
Jake looked back at his mother.
“You knew she was coming.”
“I knew she might.”
“You called her?”
“No.”
The bell sounded a third time. This time it was not impatient. It was careful, almost frightened.
