He grabbed it. Emily leaned over his shoulder while he unfolded it. Michael later told me he watched his father’s face change in seconds—confusion, disbelief, dread.
“What does it say?” Emily asked. “Did she leave? Did your mom leave?”
Daniel did not answer. He had already seen the manila envelope on the nightstand.
He opened it with shaking hands.
He read the deed.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”
Emily snatched the papers from him and scanned them once, then again.
“This can’t be real.”
“The house is in her name,” Daniel said hollowly. “The whole house. It always was.”
“But you told me—”
“She paid the down payment,” he said, sinking onto the bed. “She sold her house. The money was hers. I barely had anything.”
Emily looked at the yellow note.
$136,800 to be exact.
Her legs nearly gave out.
“Are you saying your mother invested over a hundred and thirty thousand dollars in this house and we never transferred anything?”
Daniel dragged a hand over his face.
“We never transferred it.”
The silence that followed sobered them faster than cold water.
Michael woke up from the shouting and came downstairs rubbing his eyes. Sarah woke next and started crying for me.
Emily paced like a trapped animal.