“Don’t pick up unknown calls,” Howard said.
I turned the phone face down. For the first time that morning, I felt something like grief.
Not for the house or the money. I had lost money before and made it again. Money was a tool, a shelter, sometimes a weapon. It was never blood.
I grieved the small boy who used to fall asleep in my truck after job-site visits, boots dusty, cheek pressed against the seat belt. I grieved the teenager who stopped talking after his father died, then learned that expensive things made the silence feel less lonely. I grieved my own failures too, because a parent never gets to stand outside the
wreckage and claim she had no part in building the road that led there.
But grief didn’t require surrender.
“What happens now?”
“The buyers take possession according to the agreement. Trevor and Kristen receive formal notice. If they refuse to vacate, it becomes a civil matter.”
