I almost laughed.
“Apparently, your family had a habit of believing silence protected people.”
She flinched.
Good.
I didn’t say it to be kind.
Then Brad asked the question I had been expecting.
“So are you claiming the house?”
I stared at him.
“I’m sitting in a meeting where I have already been legally given part of it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you think I’m going to sue you?”
He looked ashamed.
“I don’t know.”
That hurt.
Even after everything.
I closed the box.
“No.”
Stephanie stared at me.
“Why not?”
“Because your father didn’t owe me a childhood home.”
I pointed toward the papers.
“He owed my mother honesty and money. He failed on both. Then he owed me the truth when we met, and he failed there too.”
Neither spoke.
“But this house was also your mother’s home. She raised you there. I’m not going to turn her guilt into a weapon against her children.”
Stephanie began crying.
It was the first time I had ever seen her cry in front of me.
“I’m sorry.”
I waited.
“For what part?”
She covered her mouth.
“All of it.”
Brad looked at me.
“We thought…”
“I know what you thought.”
“Dad was older. You were—”
“Fifteen years younger.”
“Yes.”
“And therefore incapable of loving him?”
Brad looked down.
“No.”
“Your father wasn’t stupid.”
“I know.”
“Then why did both of you spend 11 years acting like I tricked him?”
Stephanie whispered, “Because Mom died.”
That was the first honest answer either of them had ever given me.
She looked at the photograph of Linda.
“We were angry that he moved on.”
My anger shifted.
Not gone.
