My Sister Sold Our Dead Mother’s House Behind My Back, Then Invited Me to Thanksgiving Like Nothing Happened
Part 3: The Kitchen
Danielle had not seen the paperwork.
Ted had put the folder together and told her he was handling it, and she had walked into this dinner assuming he had a fair offer inside, because Ted was her husband and she still, on some level, believed him about things.
She was looking at the two hundred dollars a month and doing the math the same way I had just done it.
Two hundred a month for twenty-two years. Fifty-two thousand eight hundred dollars total. My half of my mother’s house, based on the sale price he had listed on the deed, was three hundred and twelve thousand.
He was offering me sixteen cents on the dollar. And a release from prosecution.
I closed the folder. I slid it back across the table.
“Ted, can I use your bathroom.”
“Sure, honey. You know where it is.”
I walked down the hall past the kids’ movie and past the guest room and I did not go to the bathroom. I went to the kitchen, where Danielle had gone to start on the dishes because she couldn’t sit at that table anymore.
She was standing at the sink with her back to me. The water was running. Her shoulders were shaking.
I stood in the doorway and I watched her for a minute.
“Dani.”
She didn’t turn around.
“Dani. Turn off the water.”
She turned it off. She still didn’t turn around.
I said, “You didn’t know what was in that folder.”
Her shoulders shook harder.
“He told me he was going to offer you half. He said he had it worked out with the bank. A lump sum. He told me that yesterday.”
“You believed him.”
“I keep believing him, Meg. I keep believing him about everything. About the salon. About the second mortgage on our house I found out about in August. About his cousin the notary who apparently isn’t even his cousin, he’s some guy Ted knows from the gym who lost his license two years ago in Ohio.”
I did not move.
“Dani. Look at me.”
She turned around. Her face was wrecked.
“When did you find out about the notary.”
“Three weeks ago. I found a text on his phone. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do, Meg, I swear, I’ve been sick, I haven’t been sleeping, I keep looking at the boys and thinking.”
“Thinking what.”
“Thinking if he goes to jail what happens to them. Thinking if I go to jail what happens to them. Thinking I signed your name and I don’t know how to undo it.”
I sat down at her kitchen table. There was a bowl of clementines in the middle. My mother used to keep clementines in the middle of her kitchen table in the winter. It hit me hard.
“Dani. I already have a lawyer.”
Her hand went to her mouth.
“Her name is Priya. She’s already pulled the LLC filings and the deed and the notary’s records. She’s telling me I can go criminal or civil. She’s telling me the notary is going to lose more than his license this time. She’s telling me Ted is looking at eighteen to thirty months, minimum, and that you are also exposed because your name is on paperwork you knew was fraudulent.”
Danielle sat down across from me. Very slowly. Like her legs might not hold.
“Are you going to press charges.”
I looked at her for a long time.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Meg.”
“I want you to answer one question and I want you to answer it honestly, because it’s the only thing that matters to me right now. Did you know, in August, when he was setting up the LLC, that he was going to use it to buy the house from you and put my name on the deed as a signer.”
She closed her eyes.
“I knew he was setting up something. He told me it was a tax thing. When the closing happened in September he said you’d signed, and I believed him for about six hours. Then I asked to see the paperwork and he showed it to me and I saw the signature and I knew.”
“And you didn’t call me.”
“I didn’t call you.”
“Why.”
She was crying again, but quietly now.
“Because I was ashamed. Because he’d already spent the deposit. Because I thought if I could just get through the expansion and the salon started making money we could refinance and put it back and you’d never have to know your sister let this happen to you.”
“You didn’t let it happen, Dani. You signed my name.”
“I know.”
“You signed my name on our mother’s house.”
“I know.”
We sat there. In the kitchen. The dishwater going cold in the sink. Ted laughing at something in the dining room, on the phone with someone, oblivious.
I said, “I’m not signing that folder.”
“I know.”
“I’m going to leave in a few minutes and I’m going to drive home and I’m going to think for a week. And then I’m going to call you, and I’m going to tell you what I want to do. And whatever I decide, Dani, you are going to do it with me. You are going to sit next to me in Priya’s office and you are going to tell the truth about every single thing Ted did, on paper, and you are going to help me undo this. Do you understand.”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t, I go criminal. On both of you.”
“Yes.”
“And Dani.”
“Yes.”
“The boys stay out of it. Whatever happens with Ted, whatever happens with the salon, the boys stay out of it. I will help you with them if you need me to.”
She put her head down on the kitchen table and she cried like she had cried at our mother’s funeral, and I sat across from her and I did not touch her. I could not, yet. But I did not leave.
After a while I stood up and I got my coat and I walked back through the living room. Cole was asleep on the couch. I pulled the blanket up over him.
Ted was in the dining room pouring another drink.
“You headed out, Meg?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna sign that thing tonight or you need a couple days?”
I looked at him. Really looked at him. He was still smiling.
“I’ll be in touch, Ted.”
“Attagirl. Drive safe.”
I drove home in silence. No radio. Just the road and the dark and my mother’s cream sweater against my collarbone.
When I got home I sat on my couch with my coat still on and I texted Priya.
*I went. He offered me 16 cents on the dollar and a release. My sister didn’t know what was in the folder. She’s ready to cooperate. Can we meet Monday.*
She wrote back in less than a minute.
*Monday 9am. Bring her.*
Then, a second text.
*Meg. You did good.*
I did not feel like I had done good. I felt like I had walked through a house on fire and come out the other side with something small and burnt in my hands, and I did not yet know what it was.
I took off the sweater. I folded it carefully. I put it on the chair by the window.
Then I went to bed.