My father pushed himself off the truck, brushing imaginary dust from his hands with the unhurried confidence of a man making an obvious point.
“You don’t need to invite us,” he said. “We helped with the down payment, remember? That makes this shared.”
“You gave me a thousand dollars. The house cost four hundred thousand.”
“Money is money,” my mother snapped. “Don’t be petty. Family doesn’t nickel and dime each other.”
Owen came running toward me then, sandy hair flying, eyes bright with excitement.
“Mommy said I get the room upstairs with the big window! Grandma said you won’t mind!”
I looked down at him, this child who was seven years old and had no part in any of this, and felt a complicated grief move through me.
“Grandma said this is our new home,” Piper added from behind her brother, clutching a pinecone, pleased with the information. “We won’t have to leave.”
They had told the children.
Not as speculation, not as a possibility, but as a settled fact. They had prepared the children for a life in my house before they had said a single word to me about it.
