Chapter 6
"We're not going to sit down and talk about it reasonably," I said. "We're going to talk about it accurately, which is different. This house is mine. It has been mine since I closed on it eleven years ago. Brent's name has never been on the title. The prenuptial agreement he signed four years ago makes that arrangement legally clear and enforceable. The code he changed on Saturday has been restored. The smart home system has been reassigned to my sole biometric authorization. And as of ten forty-seven last night, I accepted a purchase offer on this property."
Brent's face went through several things in quick succession. "You can't—"
"I can," I said. "I own it. Entirely. I can sell it, rent it, leave it to our daughter, or do nothing with it. Those are my options and they are only my options."
"This is our home," Diane said. Her voice had the quality of a woman who has never been told no by anyone who was not immediately overruled.
"It is not your home," I said. "It has never been your home. You have been a guest here. You have sometimes behaved as though the distinction between guest and owner was negotiable. It is not."
Diane looked at Brent. Brent looked at the floor. He had the expression of a man who had flown to Miami confident in one set of facts and returned to a different set entirely, and the revision was not sitting comfortably.
"Tessa," he said. "If we could just—"
"Jennifer is filing the divorce petition this afternoon," I said. "The prenuptial agreement governs the financial terms. There is nothing complicated in those terms and I expect the process to be straightforward. Ivy will be with me. Visitation will be arranged through counsel." I looked at him steadily. "You should have an attorney of your own return Jennifer's call this week."
The sale of the house closed seven weeks later. The number from Elliot's offer was the number that appeared on the closing documents, and I signed my name on the line that had always been the only name on anything attached to that property and I walked out of the title company's office on a Thursday afternoon in March with a cashier's check and the specific feeling of something that had been complicated for a long time becoming clean.
May you like
Ivy was eight weeks old. She was in her carrier against my chest, looking at the sky above the parking lot with the focused attention she gave to things she was still deciding what to think about.
I had bought a smaller house two miles from Molly. Three bedrooms, a backyard with a fence, a kitchen with east-facing windows that caught the morning light. I had not told anyone the address except Molly and Jennifer. I had painted Ivy's room a pale yellow that was not the yellow I would have chosen at thirty-four but was exactly the yellow that made sense at forty-three for a room belonging to someone I intended to protect for the rest of my life.
