Chapter 4 - The Morning He Didn't See Coming
I called my bank at nine sharp. The woman who picked up was named Karen, and she'd handled my accounts for the better part of eleven years. I told her what I needed and she didn't make me say it twice.
"I can have the payoff paperwork ready inside an hour," she said. "Email, or do you want hard copies?"
"Both, please."
Then I dialed the house on Birchwood Lane — not Megan's cell, the landline, the one Travis always grabbed when he was home.
He answered on the third ring.
"Eleanor." Loose. Easy. "Everything all right?"
"I'd like to drive back out today," I said. "I left a few things behind."
A pause. Small, but I heard it.
"Sure. Megan's here. Come whenever works."
"I'll be there around noon."
I got dressed, drove to the bank, picked up my documents from Karen, and stopped at the county recorder's office on my way out of town. The clerk — a young man with reading glasses shoved up into his hair — pulled the property record in under five minutes and slid a printout across the counter.
"This what you were after?"
Megan's name. The address. The date the house transferred out of my mother's estate. And underneath, stamped and dated: Mortgage satisfied in full.
I folded it and tucked it into my bag beside the letter from the bank.
I pulled into the driveway at four minutes past noon. Travis's truck was at the curb. Megan's car was in the garage.
He opened the front door before I hit the porch steps.
"Eleanor. Come on in."
I followed him into the kitchen. Megan sat at the table with the baby against her shoulder. She looked up, and I gave her a small nod. Her jaw went tight, but she stayed quiet.
"Can I get you anything?" Travis said. "Coffee?"
"No, thank you." I set my bag on the table and sat down. "I came to straighten something out."
He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, still comfortable.
"Okay. What's up?"
"Yesterday you handed me a bill for six hundred and forty dollars. Food, utilities, guest room."
"Right." He nodded slowly. "Listen, Eleanor, I hope there's no hard feelings. It's just —"
"Everybody pays their share," I said. "I've got it memorized."
"Exactly."
I opened my bag and laid the bank letter on the table between us.
He looked at it. He didn't touch it.
"What's that?"
"That is proof that the mortgage on this house was paid off in full. In my name. Six years ago."
The smile didn't drop all at once. It faded slowly, like someone easing down a dimmer switch.
"I don't —"
"This is Megan's house," I said. "It has been since my mother died. I paid off the balance as a wedding gift to her before the two of you ever walked down an aisle. Which means when you charged me six hundred and forty dollars to sleep in the guest room, you were charging me rent on a house I helped make debt-free."
Megan hadn't moved. The baby was asleep now, one cheek smashed against her collarbone.
Travis pushed off the counter.
"Eleanor, that's — that's not how it works. I run this household. The bills, the groceries, the —"
"In Megan's house."
"It's our house."
"Is it?" I slid the county printout across the table next to the bank letter. "The deed says otherwise."
He stared down at the two pieces of paper. His hands hung at his sides.
"I think," he said carefully, "you're turning this into something it's not."
"Am I?" I folded my hands on the table. "Then walk me through it. Because from where I'm sitting, you took six hundred and forty dollars off me for staying in a house you don't own, right after I spent two weeks working for you for free. Tell me which part I've got wrong."
The kitchen went dead quiet. The baby made a small sound in his sleep.
Travis opened his mouth.
Then he shut it again.
May you like
And then he said something I hadn't seen coming — and it turned the whole thing in a direction none of us were ready for.
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