Part Eight: Thirty-Seven

The calls began almost at once.

Tommy called thirty-seven times in the next hour and a half. Then he started sending text messages, one after another, each one more demanding than the last.

Mom what are you talking about?

What arrangements??

Pick up the phone right now.

This isn’t funny.

Why did you leave the chat??

Mom PICK UP.

Sarah is in tears. Is that what you were trying to accomplish?

Sarah was crying.

The same woman who had spent three years leaving me out of family celebrations and cropping me out of photographs and sending thumbs-up emojis to messages telling me I was no longer welcome at Christmas. Now she was distraught because I’d stopped playing along.

I made myself a cup of chamomile tea. I sat down at the kitchen table. I watched the phone light up again and again on the table in front of me, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, and I wondered how long it would take him to understand that he might soon have to pay for his own life.

I kept copies of every single message. Screenshots, all of them, in a folder on my phone that Emma had once taught me how to make.

At a quarter to four, the doorbell rang.

Hattie Greer was standing on my porch in her bathrobe and a winter coat, with a box of tissues in one hand and her nose bright red. She’d come over to return my soup pot from Monday.

“Joan,” she said, sniffling, “there’s a man in a suit getting out of a Lincoln in front of your house. Do you want me to tell him to go away?”

“No,” I said. “That’s my lawyer. Hattie, would you do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Sit on my front porch for a couple of hours,” I said. “There’s a heater out there. I’ll bring you soup. And if anybody else comes, anybody at all, tell them I’m not available.”

Hattie looked at me for a long moment. Then she grinned, red nose and all.

“Honey,” she said, “I’ve been waiting six years for you to say that.”

Part Nine: The Dining Room

Mr. Peterson came up the porch steps in a charcoal gray suit, carrying a worn leather briefcase. He’s tall and lean, with white hair combed straight back and half-moon reading glasses on a chain around his neck. He has the calm manner of a man who’s spent fifty years handling difficult family situations without once raising his voice.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Johnson,” he said, shaking my hand. “You look prepared to take care of some business.”

“I haven’t even begun,” I said.

I led him into the dining room.

The oak table was covered with paperwork. I’d spent the forty minutes before he arrived pulling files out of Bill’s old filing cabinet in the spare bedroom, the gray metal one with the sticky second drawer. I’d laid everything out in neat stacks the way Bill taught me to do the business books. Deeds. Loan documents. Insurance policies. The operating agreement for Johnson Plumbing & Heating. And one sealed envelope, yellowed with age, with Bill’s handwriting on the front.

“Can I get you some coffee?” I asked. “I believe we have something to celebrate today.”

Mr. Peterson set down his briefcase. “And what would that be?” he asked.

“Tommy’s education,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“He’s about to find out,” I said, “what happens when you disown the woman who still owns the house you’re living in.”

Part Ten: Three Properties

Mr. Peterson sat down at the table. He put on his half-moon glasses and began going through the stacks.

His face changed as he looked over the documents.

“These are the deeds,” I told him. “All three properties are still legally mine.”

The first was Tommy and Sarah’s house on Wesleyan Drive, a four-bedroom brick colonial with a pool. When they got married fourteen years ago, they couldn’t afford a down payment. Bill and I bought the house outright and let them live in it. We told them we’d sign it over someday, when they were financially stable.

They never got financially stable. They just got more comfortable. They paid no rent. I paid the property taxes every year, nine thousand dollars, because Tommy said they were “a little tight this year.” Every year.

The second was Mark and Dana’s house in Lizella, a smaller place on three acres with a barn. Same arrangement. I’d bought it for them nine years ago when the twins were born, after Mark lost his job at the paper mill. Mark had always insisted on paying me something. Six hundred dollars a month, without fail, mailed in an envelope with a little note. Thanks, Mom.Even when he couldn’t afford it.

The third was the beach house on St. George Island.

“And the business,” Mr. Peterson said, picking up the operating agreement.

“And the business,” I said.

Johnson Plumbing & Heating had twenty-eight employees and eleven service vans. Bill owned it outright when he died. In his will, he left it to me. Tommy had been general manager since 2015, and he’d always assumed it would be his someday. He talked about it that way at Thanksgiving. When I take over the company, Mom. As though I were simply a placeholder.

I’d never enjoyed the idea of using property or money to control people. Not once in my life. Bill and I gave our children houses because we loved them and wanted them to have a better start than we did. We never once thought of it as leverage.

But Tommy had insisted that every tie between us be cut. Cutting off contact is the healthiest choice for everyone. All I was doing was getting ready to honor his decision in full.