My Sister Sold Our Mother’s House Three Days After the Funeral, But She Forgot Who Signed the Deed

Part 3: Saturday

I did not go alone.

Patricia came with me, in a navy blazer, carrying a slim leather folder. My uncle Rick came, my father’s brother, who had known my mother since she was nineteen years old. Rick is a retired sheriff’s deputy from St. Clair County and he wore a golf polo and he did not speak the whole drive over.

We got there at 1:15. The open house had started at one.

There were four cars in front of the house. A young couple was standing on the porch reading a flyer. Through the front window I could see two more people in the living room. Rebecca the realtor was in the entryway in a coral dress, gesturing at the crown molding.

Danielle was there too. In the kitchen, by the island, holding a plate of grocery-store cookies. Playing hostess in our mother’s house.

I stood on the sidewalk for a second.

Patricia said, quietly, “You’re sure.”

I said, “I’m sure.”

We walked up the driveway. The young couple on the porch smiled at us politely and moved aside. We went in.

Rebecca saw me first. Her face did something complicated. She had known me for years. Danielle and Rebecca had gone to high school together.

She said, “Amanda. Hi. I didn’t, um, I didn’t know you were coming.”

I said, “Where’s my sister.”

Danielle came out of the kitchen still holding the cookies.

I want to describe her face when she saw the three of us because I’ve thought about it a lot in the year since. It wasn’t guilt. It was calculation. She was assessing, in real time, how much of a scene I was willing to make in a house full of strangers.

She’d guessed wrong about a lot of things that week. She guessed wrong about this too.

I said, “Rebecca. I need you to stop the showing. Right now.”

Rebecca said, “Amanda, I don’t.”

Patricia stepped forward and handed her a business card. She said, “Ms. Whitaker is the owner of this property. This showing is being conducted without her authorization. I need you to ask your guests to leave and I need you to remove the listing from the MLS this afternoon.”

Danielle said, “What are you talking about.”

Patricia opened her leather folder and slid out three copies of the certified deed. She handed one to Rebecca. She handed one to Danielle.

She kept one.

The kitchen went completely quiet. I could hear a floor fan in the living room. I could hear one of the strangers in the hallway say, softly, “Should we go?”

Danielle read the deed.

She read it again.

She said, “This isn’t real.”

I said, “It’s real. Mom did it in March. Last March. A year before she died. She used a lawyer in O’Fallon and she filed it with the county the same day.”

Danielle looked at me. She looked at the deed. She looked at Rebecca, who had gone the color of wet paper.

She said, “You made her do this.”

I said, “I didn’t know she was going to do it.”

She said, “That’s a lie.”

I said, “Danielle. You put the house on the market four days after we buried her. I have a deed from fourteen months before that. Which one of us is the lie.”

Rebecca was already moving. She excused the couple in the hallway. She excused the two people in the living room. She apologized. She said there had been a paperwork issue. She said she’d be in touch about rescheduling. She said this several times while walking three separate groups of strangers out our mother’s front door.

Uncle Rick stood by the door the whole time with his arms crossed. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

When the last stranger was gone Rebecca closed the door and leaned against it and said, “Danielle. Danielle, you told me you had authority to sell.”

Danielle said, “I do have authority. She’s my mother.”

Patricia said, “Was.”

That was the only cruel thing anybody said the whole afternoon, and Patricia said it, and I did not correct her.

Danielle sat down on the arm of our mother’s couch. She was still holding the plate of cookies. She set it on the coffee table very carefully, like she was afraid of breaking it.

She said to me, “How long have you known.”

I said, “Since March last year.”

She said, “You knew for a year and a half that Mom gave you the house and you didn’t tell me.”

I said, “She asked me not to.”

Danielle said, “Why.”

I opened my mouth to answer and then I closed it. Because the honest answer was because Mom didn’t trust you not to fight her about it while she was dying, and I wasn’t going to say that out loud in the house where Mom had died.

I said, “Ask her.”

Which was a stupid thing to say. Because Mom was gone. That was the whole problem.

Danielle started crying. Not the funeral-cry. The other kind. The one from when we were kids and she’d broken something and knew Dad was going to find out.

Rebecca said she was going to go. Patricia walked her to her car and I could see them talking on the driveway for a long time. Uncle Rick went and sat in the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water from the tap.

It was just me and Danielle in the living room where our mother used to watch Wheel of Fortune.

Danielle said, “Kyle and I put an offer on a house in Winnetka.”

I said, “What.”

She said, “Six weeks ago. We put an offer on a house in Winnetka. It’s contingent on selling ours in Lincoln Park. Which is contingent on. Well. It was contingent on this.”

I said, “You planned this before she died.”

She said, “I planned it while she was dying. Yes.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

She said, “You don’t understand what it costs to live where we live.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It came out mean.

I said, “Danielle. I make sixty-one thousand dollars a year. I have a fourteen-year-old and I rent a townhouse next to a Speedway. Please tell me more about what things cost.”

She didn’t answer.

I said, “You want to know what I’m going to do with the house.”

She looked up.

I said, “I don’t know yet.”

That was the truth. I hadn’t decided. Patricia had told me I had options. I could sell it and keep every dollar. I could move Emma and me into it. I could rent it out. I could do a family arrangement where Danielle got something and I got something and it was all worked out on paper. I hadn’t picked.

Danielle said, “Mom wouldn’t have wanted us to fight over it.”

I stood up.

I said, “Don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t invoke her right now. You lost that this week.”

She looked at me and her face went through something I don’t have a word for.

Then she stood up and she picked up her purse and she walked out of the house.

I heard her car start. I heard her drive away.

Uncle Rick came in from the kitchen. He’d heard all of it.

He said, “You okay, kid.”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

We stood there in Mom’s living room for a while. The floor fan was still going. The plate of cookies was still on the coffee table.

Uncle Rick said, “You want me to take those to the food bank on my way home.”

I said, “Yes please.”

He picked up the plate. He kissed the top of my head. He left.

I locked up my mother’s house with my own key. I sat in the driver’s seat of my car for probably twenty minutes before I turned the key in the ignition.

I thought I’d feel like I’d won something.

I didn’t.

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