Chapter 6: Carla Answers the Door
I drove to my apartment alone.
Paula wanted to come.
David said it wasn't advisable.
I went anyway.
It took twenty-two minutes.
I had made that drive hundreds of times — to visit after work, to water the plants when I was between tenants, to sit in my father's chair by the window and feel close to him.
I knew every turn.
I parked across the street and sat for a moment.
The light in the front room was on.
Someone was home.
I had a key.
It was still on my keyring because Ryan had never asked for it back, probably because asking would have required an explanation.
I looked at it for a moment, then put it in my pocket and rang the bell instead.
The woman who opened the door was the woman from the photograph.
She was wearing a loose sweater and had her hair pulled back.
She looked younger in person.
She also looked, immediately and unmistakably, like she had been expecting someone else.
"You're her," she said.
"Yes," I said.
A pause.
She didn't open the door wider, but she didn't close it either.
"Ryan said you wouldn't find out until after everything was finalized," she said.
"Ryan was wrong about several things."
She looked past me toward the street, as if checking whether I'd brought someone.
Then she stepped back and opened the door.
I walked into my father's apartment.
She had changed things.
The chair by the window was still there, but it had been moved to face the television.
The bookshelf had been cleared — his books were gone, replaced with a row of small plants and a few framed photographs I didn't recognize.
The kitchen smelled like a candle I had never bought.
I stood in the center of the room and looked at it.
"I didn't know about the forgery," Carla said from behind me.
"I want you to know that.
Ryan told me the apartment was being transferred as part of a financial restructuring.
He said it was all legal."
"Did you ask to see the paperwork?"
A pause.
"No."
"Did you ask why a married man's wife wasn't involved in a financial restructuring of her own property?"
Longer pause.
"He said you had an agreement.
That the marriage was already over in practice."
I turned around.
"We had dinner together four nights ago.
He told me he loved me."
Her face changed.
Not guilt exactly.
Something more complicated than guilt.
"I didn't know that," she said quietly.
"What did you know?"
She sat down on the edge of the couch — my father's couch, reupholstered in a fabric I didn't choose — and pressed her hands together in her lap.
"I knew he was married.
He told me from the beginning that it was complicated and that he was working on ending it.
I knew about the ring — he said he'd had it made for me, that it was a design you'd liked but never received.
I thought that was—" She stopped.
"I thought that was romantic.
I understand now that it wasn't."
"When did he give you the key to this apartment?"
"Six weeks ago.
He said it was mine.
That the paperwork was done."
"It wasn't done.
It was fraudulent.
The signature on the transfer document belongs to me, and I signed it believing I was signing a refinancing form.
I did not agree to transfer this property to anyone."
She was quiet for a moment.
"What happens now?"
"My brother-in-law is a family law attorney.
The transfers are being flagged with the county recorder Monday morning.
The notary who processed the documents is going to be contacted.
And I'm going to need you to leave this apartment."
She nodded slowly.
She didn't argue.
That surprised me.
"I have nowhere to go tonight," she said.
"I'm not asking you to leave tonight.
I'm asking you to be gone by Wednesday.
That's three days."
She nodded again.
I looked at the bookshelf.
The empty space where my father's books had been.
"Where are the books that were on that shelf?" I asked.
"I put them in the hall closet.
I didn't throw them away.
I just needed the space."
I walked to the closet and opened it.
They were there, stacked carefully in two boxes.
His handwriting was on the spines of some of them — notes he'd made in pencil in the margins, dates he'd written on the inside covers.
I closed the closet door.
"Thank you for not throwing them away," I said.
She looked at me with an expression I couldn't fully name.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"For what it's worth.
I'm genuinely sorry."
May you like
I picked up my father's chair and moved it back to the window.
Then I left.
