“Why didn’t you tell me the house was still in your name?”
“I did tell you,” I said. “For months. Every other week. We need to go handle the transfer, Daniel. And every time you said later. Next week. There’s no rush. We’re family.”
He lowered his head.
“And then I stopped asking,” I said, “because some part of me knew I would need that protection.”
“Protection from me? Your own son?”
“From the situation. From what I became. A servant in my own house.”
He covered his face with his hands.
“I never wanted you to feel that way.”
“But I did. Every day.”
I opened the notebook and set it in front of him.
“Read.”
He flipped through the receipts, the appliance costs, the furniture, the bathroom remodel, the mortgage totals.
“Over one hundred thirty thousand,” he whispered.
“And that does not include three meals a day, child care, laundry, cleaning, ironing. If I billed all that at the rate of a live-in housekeeper, add another forty thousand.”
He looked sick.
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
“I know.”
“So what do you want?”
“The house,” I said first, because he needed to hear the word.
His face drained.
“Are you going to throw us out?”
Then I told him the deeper truth.