Chapter 4: The Apartment That Did Not Exist
Carol kept the card.
She slid it under my door the following morning before seven o'clock, tucked inside a folded piece of notepaper with a single line in her handwriting: *In case you need it.*
I read the card at my kitchen table while the kettle boiled.
No Vanessa in the doorway.
She had been quiet since the previous night, moving through the house with careful steps, the way you move when you know the ground has shifted beneath you but you haven't yet decided what to do about it.
The card read: *Hartley & Associates — Property Valuation and Estate Planning Consultants.*
Not a council assessor.
Not a building inspector.
An estate planning consultant.
The kind of firm people contact when they want to understand what a property is worth before it changes hands.
I poured my tea.
Set the card flat on the table.
Picked up my phone and dialed the number for Daniel's apartment building — the address he had given me when he first said the renovation had started.
A woman answered on the third ring.
"Good morning.
Elmfield Court."
"Good morning," I said.
"I'm trying to reach the management office.
I have a question about an ongoing renovation in one of your units."
"Of course.
Which unit number?"
"Fourteen B.
The tenant is Daniel Harte."
A short pause.
Keys clicking somewhere.
"I'm sorry," the woman said.
"We don't have a current tenant by that name.
Fourteen B has been vacant since February."
I set my cup down.
"Are you certain?"
"Yes.
February the fourth.
The lease ended and wasn't renewed." Another pause.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?"
"No," I said.
"Thank you."
I ended the call.
February the fourth.
Daniel had arrived at my door on February the ninth, five days later, with two suitcases and a story about contractors and delays and just a few weeks, Mom, I promise.
There was no renovation.
There had never been a renovation.
He had lost his apartment — or left it — and had come to me not as a temporary guest but as someone with nowhere else to go.
And Vanessa, rather than tell me the truth, had decided to use those weeks to measure the walls of my home and calculate what it might be worth.
I heard footsteps in the hallway.
Then Vanessa appeared in the kitchen doorway, dressed and composed, her hair already done.
"Morning," she said pleasantly.
"Did you sleep well?"
"Sit down, Vanessa."
Something moved behind her eyes.
But she pulled out the chair across from me and sat.
I placed the card on the table between us.
"Hartley and Associates.
Estate planning consultants.
The man you sent to speak with my neighbors."
Her eyes dropped to the card.
Came back up.
"I don't know what you're—"
"There is no renovation," I said.
"Fourteen B at Elmfield Court has been vacant since February.
Daniel's lease ended.
He didn't tell me that.
You didn't tell me that.
You came here under false pretenses and spent three months trying to make me feel like a guest in my own home while someone photographed my front garden."
Vanessa was quiet for three full seconds.
Then something in her expression changed.
The polite smile was gone.
What replaced it was cooler and more deliberate.
"You're an old woman living alone in a four-bedroom house," she said.
"That's not practical.
Daniel agrees with me, whether he's willing to say it to your face or not."
"Daniel," I said, "is not the owner of this house."
"Not yet."
May you like
The words arrived so quietly I almost didn't catch them.
Almost.
