She was brisk, unadorned, and blessedly uninterested in tone. “Do not meet her alone,” she said. “Do not respond. We’re documenting contact attempts. Also, thank you for sending the storage-unit materials. They’re useful.”
Useful. Such a dry little word for the moment you realize your parents may have a longer history of fraud than you ever imagined.
“Is the note a violation?” I asked.
“Not of the court order as written, if she remained off the property and did not contact you directly except through delivered correspondence.” She paused. “It is, however, stupid. Stupid helps us.”
After I hung up, I walked room to room through the house as if checking it against reality.
The front bedroom still had the pale green walls I’d painted the summer after I moved in. The hall floor still had the scar where my grandfather dropped a toolbox in 1998 and refused to sand out the dent because “a house should remember the weight of work.” The back porch still smelled damp and earthy from the potted mint that had gone half wild in the rain.
