His jaw tightened. “Natalie, stop acting like I was trying to steal from your father.”
The sentence landed between us. He heard it too, because his expression changed a fraction too late.
I hadn’t said steal.
He had.
We stood there with the late afternoon light slanting through the shutters, laying stripes across the rug my father chose from a shop in Santa Barbara because “good rugs make people tell the truth.” I used to think that was one of his more theatrical sayings.
Maybe not.
“I want you out,” I said.
He blinked. “You can’t throw me out of my own house.”
Something inside me went very still.
“This house,” I said carefully, “is not your own anything.”
That was when his face changed again. Not fear this time. Calculation.
And in that instant, I knew the affair had never been the whole story.
It was just the part careless enough to get photographed.
Part 5
Grant didn’t leave right away.
Men like Grant never leave when asked. They negotiate. They stall. They circle language like raccoons around a locked trash can, looking for the latch.
“You’re upset,” he said, as if he were narrating weather to a child. “This is not the time to make permanent decisions.”