Chapter 8 - What Grant Did Next
He didn't call again. He showed up instead.
Saturday morning, two days after Paula filed. I was in my grandmother's kitchen making coffee when I heard tires in the driveway — not Ethan's car. A black SUV I didn't know.
Grant got out alone. He was taller than his voice had made me think. Expensive coat. He walked up to my front door like a man who'd never once been turned away from one.
I didn't open it.
"Megan." Two knocks. "I'm not here to threaten you. I want five minutes. That's all."
I called Paula. It went to voicemail. I texted: *Grant is at the house.*
I looked at the door for a long moment. Then I opened it — but I stayed in the frame and didn't step back to let him in.
"Five minutes," I said. "Right here."
He glanced at the doorway, weighed it, decided not to push.
"I want to make you an offer," he said. "A real one. Not whatever Ethan put in front of you — something fair." He reached into his coat and took out an envelope. "Two hundred and fifty thousand. Wire transfer, cleared inside two days. You drop the motion, you hand back Rebecca's phone, and everybody walks away from this."
I looked at the envelope. I didn't take it.
"The land's worth a lot more than that," I said.
Something flickered across his face. "You've done your homework."
"The rezoning went through six months ago. The development corridor changes the number completely. Two-fifty is an insult, and you know it."
He studied me for a second, then put the envelope back inside his coat.
"You're not what Ethan described," he said.
"No. I'm guessing I'm not."
"He told me you were soft. That you'd waited for him your whole life and you'd do anything to hold the marriage together." He tilted his head. "He was wrong about that."
"He was wrong about a lot of things."
Grant's eyes moved past me — just for a second — into the house. The hallway. The kitchen. The porch swing framed in the side window.
"Your grandmother bought this place in 1974," he said. "Did you know that? Eleven thousand dollars. Planted those apple trees in the back herself." He paused. "I looked it up. I look everything up before I get involved in it."
"Then you know it's not for sale."
He was quiet a moment. "The DA's going to come after me," he said. Not a question.
"I'd imagine so."
"That thing Ethan told you — about me having people in the courthouse. That was Ethan. I don't work that way."
"You wrote the reversion clause," I said. "You set up the notary. You told Rebecca about the other people you did this to, over dinner, and you laughed about it."
His jaw went tight. "She told you that."
"She recorded it."
He looked at me for a long moment. The morning was quiet around us — birds somewhere back in the apple trees, one car far off on the road.
"What would it take," he said slowly, "for you to think about a different arrangement. One that doesn't involve the DA."
"Nothing," I said. "There's nothing you can hand me that undoes what you did to those other people. The ones before me." I held his eyes. "I'm not the only one, Grant. You said that yourself."
He stood there another second. Then he straightened — smoothed the front of his coat, the exact gesture Ethan made a hundred times a day. Brothers, after all.
"You should know Ethan's going to make the divorce as hard as he possibly can," he said.
"He can try."
Grant nodded once, walked back to the SUV, got in, and drove off without looking back.
I went inside and poured my coffee. My hands were steady.
Paula called back eleven minutes later. I told her everything.
"He came to the house?" Her voice sharpened. "In person?"
"Yes."
"That's interference with a legal proceeding. He just handed us something." A pause. "Please tell me you recorded it."
I looked down at my phone. I'd started recording the second I reached for the door.
"Yes," I said.
May you like
A short silence. Then: "Megan. You're very good at this."
"I had a good teacher," I said. "Her name is Rebecca."
