Chapter 8: What David Did
David called at seven.
Lily was in the bath.
I could hear her singing something — a song from a cartoon, the same four lines repeated with great confidence and no particular accuracy.
"I need to understand something," David said.
He didn't say hello.
"How long have you had the second deed?"
"Since last night."
"Harlow gave it to you."
"It was in the packet."
A long pause.
"I want you to know," he said, "that my mother didn't know what she was signing.
I told her it was a standard estate document."
"David."
"I'm not saying that to protect her.
I'm saying it because it's true and because it matters for what happens next."
I sat down at the kitchen table.
The second deed was still there.
I had looked at it so many times the paper had started to feel familiar, like something I had always known.
"What are you telling me?" I said.
"I'm telling you that I made a decision I shouldn't have made and I used documents my mother signed without understanding them and I told myself it was for the estate and it wasn't." His voice was flat.
Controlled.
But underneath it, something that had been held in place for a long time was starting to give.
"I told myself a lot of things."
"Like what?"
"Like that you didn't deserve the house because you left.
Like that Lily would be fine because she had you and you were capable.
Like that my father was confused in those last months and didn't know what he really wanted." He stopped.
"He knew exactly what he wanted.
He always did.
I just didn't want to hear it."
The bath sounds in the other room had gone quiet.
Lily was listening to something, or thinking, or simply sitting in the warm water being six years old and uncomplicated.
"The company will be dissolved," David said.
"I'll file the corrected transfer this week.
Harlow can oversee it."
"And the Millbrook transfer deed your mother filed?"
"I'll withdraw it.
Both of us will.
Whatever Harlow needs from us, he'll get it."
I hadn't expected it to happen this cleanly.
I had expected another negotiation, another layer of resistance, another version of the same argument dressed in different clothes.
"Why?" I said.
"Because Sandra told me something last night," David said.
"After you left.
She told me what my father said in the car on the way to Harlow's office." He paused.
"He said that the only thing he regretted was not making things easier for Lily while he was still alive to do it.
That he'd spent too long keeping the peace and not enough time doing what was right." Another pause.
"He was talking about me.
I know he was talking about me."
Lily appeared in the doorway in her pajamas, hair damp, holding a towel she had not used very effectively.
She looked at me on the phone.
I held up one finger.
One minute.
She nodded gravely and went to get her book from the shelf.
"David," I said.
"She drew Margaret into her picture today.
Standing in the garden by the flowers."
Silence.
"She still calls her Grandma," I said.
"Even after last night.
She asked me in the car on the way home if Grandma was going to be okay."
The silence on the other end of the line lasted long enough that I thought the call had dropped.
Then David said, very quietly: "I'll have the paperwork to Harlow by Friday."
"Thank you," I said.
"Claire." He stopped.
Started again.
"I'm sorry.
For last night.
For all of it.
For longer than last night."
I looked at Lily, cross-legged on the sofa now, book open, lips moving slightly as she read.
"I know," I said.
And I meant it.
Not as forgiveness, not yet, but as the truth.
I knew.
I had known for a while.
We said goodbye and I set the phone down.
Lily looked up from her book.
"Was that Daddy?"
"Yes."
"Is he okay?"
"He's going to be," I said.
May you like
She considered this with the seriousness she brought to most things.
"Good," she said, and went back to her book.
