I wanted to scream.
Instead I smiled.
“You know what? You’re right. Let’s do it properly.”
Trey blinked. His mother narrowed her eyes. It was the first time in six years I had agreed with her about anything, and she clearly didn’t trust it.
But they were too happy to ask questions.
Here is the thing Trey had forgotten. Or maybe he’d never actually understood it.
When we bought that house six years ago, Trey’s credit was wrecked. Two maxed-out cards and a car loan he’d walked away from before we met. No bank would put his name on a mortgage.
The deposit came from my grandmother. She left me forty-one thousand dollars, and every cent of it went into that house.
The mortgage was in my name. The deed was in my name.
Only my name.
Trey had been paying into it, yes. And he’d been calling it our house for so long that he’d started believing he could give it away.
He couldn’t. He never could.
So that week I was the perfect, agreeable daughter-in-law.
I helped them pack. I labelled boxes. I asked his mother which room she wanted for her sewing machine. She told me, smugly, and I wrote it on a sticky note.
And on Tuesday I asked her one innocent question.
“Have you already given notice on your apartment?”
“Of course,” she said. “Landlord’s got new tenants lined up for the first.”
That was all I needed to know.
On Wednesday I spent my lunch hour with a lawyer. On Thursday I spent it with a locksmith. On Friday I quietly moved my grandmother’s china, my documents and my cat to my sister’s house.
Saturday morning, at nine, the moving truck pulled up with his parents’ entire apartment in the back.
Trey went to open the front door.
His key didn’t work.
