Chapter 2: The Name She Had No Right to Say
Heloise didn't stay on the floor long.
She stood slowly, smoothed her jacket again, and looked at me the way someone looks at a problem they've already solved.
"You don't understand what you just did," she said.
I held Thora closer.
"I understand perfectly."
"No." She picked up her phone from the counter.
"You really don't."
She turned the screen toward me.
It was a document.
My signature at the bottom.
A property transfer — dated three months ago — moving the house into a joint trust.
Her name beside mine.
My hands went cold.
"I managed everything while you were gone," she said.
"You told me to.
You signed everything I put in front of you.
You trusted me."
She was right.
I had.
Every document she emailed, I had signed without reading.
I had been grieving.
I had been exhausted.
I had been grateful.
"That signature is real," she said.
"That trust is legal.
And if you force me out of this house, I will take half of it with me."
Thora pressed her face into my shoulder.
Then Heloise said something else.
Something quiet.
Something she clearly expected to finish me.
May you like
She said my late wife's name.
And she smiled.
