Chương 5
“I’m sorry to contact you like this, but I’ve been trying the number I was given for the trust and haven’t gotten a response.”
Eleanor’s face tightened.
Caleb continued.
“I need to speak with you before Monday because I discovered a discrepancy in the ownership documents after the purchase agreement was executed.”
Maya looked at Richard.
He had stopped blinking.
“The agreement represents that the seller has authority to convey Caroline Bennett’s interest, but the county records and trust documents don’t appear to support that.”
There was a pause on the recording.
Then Caleb said, “If you didn’t authorize the sale, please don’t sign anything anyone sends you, and call me as soon as you get this.”
The message ended.
For several seconds, the basement contained only the low mechanical hum of the furnace.
Evan set his water glass on the workbench.
“Who signed?”
Maya looked at the legal document beneath her mother’s letter.
Caleb Ross’s name appeared under a paragraph identifying him as successor trustee upon a specified event.
She read the paragraph twice without absorbing it.
“Who signed the sale agreement?” Evan asked again.
Richard sat on the bottom stair.
“I did.”
Nobody reacted immediately.
The confession was too plain for the room it landed in.
Maya lowered the phone.
“You sold my half of the house.”
“No.”
“You just said you signed.”
“I signed an agreement.”
“That is what selling something means.”
“It hasn’t closed.”
Evan made a disgusted sound.
“Oh, good.”
He picked up his glass again.
“So technically we’re only at attempted theft.”
“Evan.”
“No, Dad, I’d actually love the vocabulary lesson.”
Richard rubbed both hands over his face.
“I thought I had authority.”
Eleanor’s laugh was quiet and terrible.
“You knew you didn’t.”
“I thought the trust had terminated.”
“You thought?”
“I was told.”
“By whom?”
Richard looked toward the gray lockbox.
That was enough to make Maya’s stomach drop again.
She moved the folders aside.
Under the checkbook was a business card.
Harlan Pike, Attorney at Law.
Eleanor saw the name and swore.
Maya had never heard her grandmother use that word.
“Who is he?”
“Your father’s old business attorney.”
Richard said, “He handled the loan restructuring.”
“The restructuring that nearly cost Caroline the house?”
“Yes.”
“And you went back to him?”
“He called me.”
Maya stared at him.
“When?”
“Last month.”
The date explained the property company’s first letter.
It explained the unanswered calls.
It explained why Richard had spent her birthday dinner behaving like a man waiting for a window to break.
“Why did he call?”
“He said a developer had approached several owners on this street.”
Maya almost laughed.
The neighborhood was forty-year-old brick houses, basketball hoops, dogwood trees, and driveways too narrow for the oversized SUVs everyone bought anyway.
“What developer?”
“Northline Residential.”
Denise, still halfway down the stairs, said, “They bought the Wilson place.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Eleanor closed her eyes.
“I told you to stay upstairs.”
“I did stay upstairs.”
“You are physically on the stairs.”
“I’m not in the basement.”
Evan muttered, “I’m beginning to understand why Mom drank wine at Thanksgiving.”
Denise ignored him.
“They bought three houses near the elementary school too.”
Maya looked back at Richard.
“How much?”
His hesitation was answer enough to tell her the number mattered.
“One point two.”
Evan whistled before catching himself.
The house was nice, but it was not a million-dollar house.
Maya had spent the previous year watching listings because she and her boyfriend had once discussed buying something together before they stopped discussing almost everything.
This neighborhood might support six hundred thousand on an ambitious day.
“Why would they pay that?”
Richard said, “They aren’t buying the house.”
The room seemed to shift again.
Eleanor’s eyes sharpened.
“What are they buying?”
“Six properties.”
“Together?”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Eleanor gave him a look that made the lie collapse before it had time to stand.
Richard sighed.
“Townhouses, I think.”
Maya leaned against the workbench.
“So you agreed to sell the house.”
“Yes.”
“The house you live in.”
“Yes.”
“Without telling Evan.”
Richard looked at his son.
“No.”
“Without telling me.”
“No.”
“And you thought we’d find out when, exactly, a bulldozer came through the kitchen?”
“The closing wasn’t until January.”
It was such an absurd defense that Maya stared at him.
Evan started laughing.
This time he could not stop.
He bent over, one hand on his knee, the sound halfway between amusement and anger.
“January.”
Richard’s mouth tightened.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“After tonight.”
Evan straightened.
“You were going to ruin her birthday tomorrow instead?”
Maya looked at the cake box visible through the open basement doorway upstairs.
One pink candle had rolled onto the kitchen floor.
She had bought those candles herself because Richard always forgot candles.
The stupidness of that detail nearly undid her.
She picked up Caroline’s letter instead.
“Why did Mom name Caleb?”
Eleanor answered.
“Because she didn’t trust Richard to administer the trust.”
Richard looked at the floor.
Maya read farther.
Her mother’s handwriting became smaller near the margins, as it always had when she was trying to fit too much into a card.
Caroline wrote that the trust would hold her interest in the house until Maya turned thirty, unless Richard attempted to sell, refinance, pledge, or otherwise encumber his share before then.
If that happened, an independent trustee would assume control of Caroline’s interest and determine whether retaining or selling it best protected Maya.
Maya checked the date.
Her mother had signed it twelve years earlier.
“Thirty.”
She looked up.
“I’m twenty-eight.”
Richard nodded.
“So it hasn’t terminated.”
“No.”
“But you signed anyway.”
“Harlan said the restriction might not be enforceable because Caroline died before—”
Eleanor cut him off.
“Harlan says whatever the person paying him needs to hear.”
“He said there was an argument.”
“There is always an argument when lawyers are billing by the hour.”
Maya turned the page.
May you like
A sentence had been underlined by her mother.
If Richard is in trouble again, do not confuse rescuing him with loving him.
