Todd got out first. He stood on the walk and looked up at the porch and could not assemble the words.
For a moment, no one moved. The children stared up at the house they’d once argued over bedrooms in. Megan’s hand found Todd’s arm, not for affection, I think, but for balance.
“You bought it?” Megan finally managed. “You bought our house?”
“I bought a house,” I said. “It was for sale. I paid cash.”
“With what money?” Todd’s voice had gone thin, the voice of a boy, almost, the one I used to call in from the yard at dusk. “Mom. With what money?”
So I told them. Standing on my own porch, with my rosebushes already going into the soil along the walk, I told them about the lottery ticket, and the eighty-nine million dollars, and the trusts, and Rosedale Holdings, the company whose name my son had carried in from the mailbox a dozen times and never once asked about.
