He pulled out a chair but did not sit.
“Because I wanted it to be true.”
Brenda gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“You wanted more than that.”
He lowered his eyes.
Mr. Abernathy placed a different folder in front of me.
“The agreement I mentioned is separate. Your husband established a procedure for withdrawing family use of the assets while protecting the business and its employees. You signed it together. It isn’t this purported transfer.”
I remembered a conference room, my husband squeezing my knee beneath the table. I had remembered the wills. Not every page surrounding them.
“You should have explained on the telephone.”
“Yes,” he said. “And I should have examined this packet before bringing it here. I’m sorry.”
He did not add an excuse.
Brenda looked at the eviction notice.
“So this is what you want? Police? Your son homeless? All because he didn’t invite you to dinner?”
My fingers tightened around the torn paper.
For a moment I saw every Christmas at once: Kenneth asleep against my shoulder, Kenneth dropping a platter, Kenneth taller than me and still bending his head for a kiss.
Then I looked at the date beneath my copied signature.
“Call them,” I said.
CHAPTER 3 – What He Signed
Kenneth sat down so abruptly the chair scraped the floor.
Brenda walked toward the hallway.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To get my bag.”
“Leave the documents here,” Mr. Abernathy said.
She turned on him. “You don’t get to give me orders.”
“No. But nothing else leaves this table.”
He made the calls while I gathered the torn halves without trying to fit them together. My hands had steadied. That frightened me in a different way.
Kenneth watched his wife retrieve her bag from the coat rack. She took out her phone, tapped the screen, then held it against her chest when it began to ring.
The caller’s name was visible.
A company I recognized from an advertisement promising quick purchases of inherited houses.
Mr. Abernathy stopped speaking.
