Chương 4
“Because headlights bother me.”
“You forget appointments.”
“I forgot a dental cleaning.”
“You left the stove on.”
Suzanne frowned.
“When?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“The burner was on low because I was keeping gravy warm.”
Matthew blinked.
“Oh.”
Brooke looked at him.
He rubbed his forehead.
“Fine. I got that one wrong.”
Suzanne almost smiled.
Almost.
Matthew sat again.
“I worry about you.”
“I believe you.”
“You don’t act like it.”
“Worry and respect are not the same thing.”
His eyes closed.
There was enough truth in the sentence to make Suzanne wish she had said it differently.
Brooke stepped forward.
“This is unbelievable. We were trying to help.”
Suzanne looked at the sale agreement beneath Vance’s folder.
“Why was your friend’s company buying the house?”
Brooke’s face went still.
Matthew looked at her.
“What?”
Suzanne continued.
“You said an investor had made an off-market offer.”
Brooke hesitated.
“So?”
“The buyer listed on the agreement is Northline Residential Partners.”
“Yes.”
“Who is Gregory Bell?”
Brooke’s eyes narrowed.
“Greg is one of the principals.”
“Your former employer?”
Matthew turned toward her.
“You worked for them?”
Brooke looked at him.
“Briefly.”
“You said your friend knew an investor.”
“She does.”
“Who?”
Brooke stared at him.
“Matthew, this is getting stupid.”
“Who?”
Suzanne had not known that part when she called Vance.
She learned it the following afternoon.
The information was not hidden. Northline had a website. Brooke’s employment history had once included the company on her professional profile before she removed it. The proposed purchase price sat low enough beneath a recent neighborhood sale to make Suzanne curious.
Curiosity had carried her through most of her adult life.
Grief had not killed it.
Age had not dulled it.
Being spoken to slowly by her daughter-in-law had sharpened it considerably.
Brooke crossed her arms.
“I know Greg.”
“How well?”
“We worked together.”
Matthew’s voice changed.
“And the price?”
“It’s a quick close.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Quick-close buyers discount.”
“How much?”
Brooke looked toward Suzanne.
There it was.
A plea, almost.
Do not make me answer this in front of him.
Suzanne did not rescue her.
Matthew picked up the sale agreement.
He scanned the first page, then the next.
“Mom, what’s the house worth?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
Vance spoke.
“A broker opinion Suzanne obtained Tuesday placed a likely open-market range roughly two hundred seventy thousand above this offer, depending on condition and timing.”
Matthew stared at Brooke.
The room changed.
Not loudly.
Nobody shouted.
But until that moment, Matthew had still been able to believe he and his wife had made an insensitive attempt to help.
Now something darker had entered.
Brooke lifted both hands.
“There are commissions, repairs, contingencies, months of uncertainty—”
“Two hundred seventy thousand?”
“That is not what she would net.”
“How much would Northline net?”
Brooke went quiet.
Matthew stood.
“Do you have money in this deal?”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Suzanne saw Vance notice it.
Matthew did too.
“Brooke.”
“I don’t.”
“Would you get a referral fee?”
Brooke said nothing.
Matthew stared at her.
“Would you?”
“It’s not a referral fee.”
“What is it?”
She exhaled sharply.
“Consulting.”
Suzanne felt something in her chest go cold.
She had suspected an arrangement.
Suspecting was different from hearing it.
Matthew stepped backward as if Brooke had moved toward him.
“How much?”
“It isn’t finalized.”
“How much?”
“Twenty-five.”
He stared.
“Thousand?”
Brooke’s jaw hardened.
“Yes.”
The rain ticked against the glass.
Vance reached for his tea.
He had not put sugar in it.
Suzanne noticed because Daniel used to insist Vance liked tea only as an excuse to eat sugar.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
Suzanne looked at Brooke.
“You were going to be paid if I sold my home cheaply to your old company.”
Brooke’s face flushed.
“That is an intentionally ugly way to say it.”
“What’s the pretty way?”
Brooke looked wounded.
It might even have been genuine.
“I did the work.”
Matthew laughed.
A short, broken sound.
“What work?”
“Finding an option. Negotiating. Getting people to move fast. Do you think things arrange themselves?”
“You arranged a fee for yourself.”
“We need money too.”
The words landed before Brooke could stop them.
Matthew’s expression changed.
Suzanne looked from one to the other.
“What money?”
Brooke closed her eyes.
Matthew said, “Don’t.”
Suzanne turned to him.
“What money?”
He sat down.
His hands hung between his knees.
Brooke pressed her lips together.
It was Vance who looked away.
That frightened Suzanne more than anything that had happened so far.
“Matthew?”
Her son stared at the rug.
“I lost my job.”
The sentence was quiet.
Suzanne’s first reaction was irritation.
Not fear.
Not sympathy.
Irritation.
“When?”
“February.”
It was June.
She stared at him.
“You told me you were working from home.”
“I was.”
“At what?”
“Trying to find another job.”
Brooke sat on the edge of the sofa.
Some of the hardness left her posture.
Suzanne looked at Matthew.
“You came here every Sunday for four months and lied to me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He rubbed his palms together.
“I thought I’d have something before you had to know.”
“Had to?”
“I didn’t want—”
He stopped.
His throat worked.
“I didn’t want you looking at me like I’d failed.”
Suzanne sat back.
The anger she had expected did not arrive.
Instead came a memory of Matthew at twenty-two, standing in the same room after dropping out of a graduate program he had hated.
Daniel had shouted.
Suzanne had not.
She had made spaghetti.
Later Matthew told her the spaghetti had been worse.
“You weren’t mad,” he said. “You were disappointed.”
“I was worried.”
“Same face.”
Now he was forty.
Same face.
Suzanne rubbed a thumb over the edge of her watch.
“How bad is it?”
Matthew looked at Brooke.
Brooke answered.
“We’re behind.”
“On what?”
“The mortgage.”
Suzanne’s stomach tightened.
“How far?”
“Three payments.”
“Credit cards?”
Brooke nodded.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“Brooke.”
“Thirty-eight.”
“Thousand?”
“Yes.”
Matthew stared at the floor.
May you like
Suzanne let the number settle.
She had forty-two million dollars in ranch assets and had spent the previous Friday arguing with herself about whether eight dollars was too much for cherries.
