Chapter 10 - THE PRICE OF THE HOUSE
The title company had paused the original transaction after Maya disputed it.
That should have ended the immediate threat.
Instead, Jake had contacted another buyer.
A cash buyer.
Someone willing to move quickly.
Maya made calls while I sat across from her, gripping a paper cup until its rim bent.
“This doesn’t mean the sale can go through,” she said. “It means we need to make sure everyone involved knows you haven’t authorized it.”
I nodded.
My body kept hearing a different sentence.
They can take it while you’re sleeping.
By afternoon, the second transaction was also stopped pending review.
The buyer’s representative sent over what they had received.
A copy of my identification.
A property disclosure.
A seller authorization.
And an email claiming I was traveling and had given Jake permission to sign on my behalf.
I wasn’t traveling.
I was ten minutes away, hiding my bruised face behind a paper cup.
“Where did he get the buyer?” I asked.
Maya turned a page.
“Your father-in-law made the introduction.”
Don.
The man who had stayed in his recliner.
The man who pretended everything happened somewhere outside his responsibility.
His name appeared in the correspondence.
His phone number.
His instructions about how quickly they needed the money.
The first payment wouldn’t have gone toward ordinary family bills.
It would have gone toward his debt.
Jake had planned to keep enough to move out.
Move out.
I read that line twice.
There was an apartment application attached to one email, apparently sent by mistake with the other documents.
One applicant.
Jake Miller.
One occupant.
He hadn’t been trying to save our marriage.
He had been trying to leave it with my house in his pocket.
I put the papers down.
For six years, he’d accused me of being selfish whenever I bought lunch or visited Claire.
Meanwhile, he had planned a new life funded by selling the home my mother helped me buy.
Maya waited.
“Are you all right?”
“No.”
It was a relief to answer honestly.
Then I picked up the papers again.
“But I can keep reading.”
That evening, Nora called.
“Dad wants to talk.”
“He can talk to the investigators.”
“He says Jake is blaming everything on him.”
I looked at Don’s messages.
Ask her about the papers she signed.
“He knew.”
“I know.”
Nora went quiet.
Then she said, “Rachel, there’s an envelope at my place. Dad left it here this morning.”
“What’s in it?”
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Don’t.”
But she had already seen the name written across the front.
May you like
It wasn’t mine.
It was the notary’s.
