The Voicemail From Shoreline Crest

"Mr. Haskett, this is Rhonda Fitch with Shoreline Crest Homes, just confirming the purchase agreement you signed September thirtieth."

The woman's voice came out of Gil's phone, tinny and cheerful, while Gil held it up between us on the flowered quilt. It was Thursday afternoon. He'd come in looking ten years older than he had on Monday, and before I could tell him about the counter and the clipboard, he'd said, "I know. I read Holloway's report at eight this morning. Hush. Listen to this first."

"That's for fourteen Heron Point Road," Rhonda Fitch went on, "at six-ten, contingent on the guardianship order, the way we discussed. Our buyers are very motivated, they'd love to close within thirty days of the order. I tried your cell a couple times. Give me a ring when the judge signs. Thanks so much, bye now."

Fourteen Heron Point Road. My house. Dale's house. The dock we built the summer Wade turned ten, the maple Poppy calls the climbing tree, the kitchen window where I've stood every morning of my married life and after, with my coffee watching the mist come off the water.

Six-ten. Six hundred and ten thousand dollars.

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

"Your answering machine." Gil set the phone down. "You gave me your spare key in 2019 when you went to see your sister in Tucson. I never gave it back. I went over there last night at eleven o'clock with a flashlight, feeling like a burglar, and I pushed the button Dale taped the note next to." He almost smiled. "PUSH HERE FOR MESSAGES, LOTTIE. In capital letters."

"He thought I'd never figure it out."

"You never did."

"I never needed to. Nobody calls the house but you and the pharmacy." I stared at the phone. "Why would she call my house?"

"Wade wrote your landline on the agreement as his contact number. It's the only number he's ever known by heart. She thought she was calling Wade." He tapped the screen. "The message is dated October first, 2:10 p.m."

October first.

"The judge signed on the second," I said.

"The judge signed on the second." He let it sit. "Wade signed a contract to sell your house on September thirtieth. Two days before he had any legal right to sell it. Four days after Brynn's affidavit was notarized. Contingent on an order that, as far as the rest of the world knew, hadn't been asked for yet."

I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough for the room to go dim.

I'd known since Tuesday, since Deputy Brandt said six minutes, that Wade was part of it. I'd known and I'd tucked it away under Brynn's red handwriting, because the other thing was too big. You can stand to have a daughter-in-law betray you. She came into your family grown. She owes you nothing. But a son you carried, a son you drove to every ballgame and sat up with through the chicken pox and the broken arm and the girl who dumped him at prom. That son selling your house out from under you before the ink was dry on the lie that put you here.

There's no place in you built to hold that.

"Both of them," I said finally. "She plans it. He signs it."

Gil didn't argue. He didn't agree either. He was looking at me with that careful lawyer's face.

"Here's what I know," he said. "This is motive, and it's on tape, and it's dated. I'm subpoenaing Shoreline Crest for the signed agreement. I'm subpoenaing the sheriff for the dispatch audio from September fourteenth, Brandt says it's still there. And I filed a notice this morning that you're represented by counsel of your choosing, which you are allowed to have, guardianship or no." He took a breath. "That last part, Wade's going to find out about."

"Good."

"Lottie. It's not good. It means he knows we're fighting."

He found out at six.

I heard him before I saw him, his work boots on the tile out in the hall, fast and heavy. The keypad chirped. He came into my room without knocking, and his face was red under the beard and his orange cap was crushed in his fist.

"You hired Gil Tanaka?"

"Gil offered."

"He's eighty years old."

"He's seventy-two, and he still reads a contract better than your lawyer from Clinton."

Wade stopped. Something went across his face, and I realized he was trying to work out what I meant by contract, and I realized just as fast that I shouldn't have said it. I made my face into Opal Arbogast's face. Mild, a little lost. He looked at me a long moment, and then his shoulders came down.

"Mom," he said, and sat on the end of the bed, and put his cap on his knee, and just like that he was my son again, tired and sad. "I'm trying to help you. Do you understand that? Everything I've done, I've done so you're safe."

"Then take me home."

"I can't."

"You can. You're my guardian. You can do anything you want."

He rubbed his face. "Okay. Here's what I can do. You sign the listing papers with Shoreline Crest yourself. Voluntarily. It's a great offer, Mom, it's more than that place is worth, and with that money you'd be set for life. You come live with us, in the downstairs room, and I go to the judge and I tell her we worked it out as a family, and she drops the whole thing. No more Birchwood. No more court."

"And I see Poppy."

"Every day." He smiled. The good smile. "Every single day, Mom."

I thought about it. God help me, for about four seconds I thought about it. Poppy's room is right above the downstairs one. I'd hear her feet in the morning. I'd walk her to the bus.

And I'd sign away Dale's dock with my own hand, and never be able to say afterward that anybody took it.

"No," I said.

His smile stayed exactly where it was. That was the worst part. It stayed right there while the rest of his face went somewhere else.

"Okay," he said. He stood up and put his cap on. "Then Poppy's not coming Sunday."

"Wade."

"After what you said about her mother? In front of the court lady? In front of everybody?" He shook his head. "No. I'm her father, and I'm your guardian, and I'm saying no. I already told the desk. Nobody on the list but me."

"You can't keep my grandbaby from me."

"I can, actually." He was at the door. He turned, and for a second the smile finally slipped. "Read your order, Mom. I can do anything I want."

Sunday visiting hours at Birchwood are two to four.

I put on my good slacks and the mustard cardigan and I sat in the lobby chair nearest the heavy door with my hands folded, even though I knew. Other families came through. A man brought Opal a milkshake, and she asked him where his bus was. A teenage boy played cards with his grandfather and let him win without making it obvious, and I watched him do it and had to look out the window.

At three the lobby had mostly emptied. At three-thirty Tamika brought me a cup of coffee and kept quiet, which was kind of her.

At four visiting hours ended, and nobody had come.

I walked back to my room slowly, because there wasn't any reason to walk fast. I opened the door. The blinds were down and the stripes of light lay across the floor the way they always did, and across my chair.

And on the seat of the chair sat one small purple rain boot.

Just one. The left one. The same one that had fallen off Poppy's foot into my gravel driveway eight days ago, when her father pulled her out of my car, and her mother bent down, and picked it up.