Chapter 2 - THE GHOST AT THE TABLE
The silence in the dining room was absolute.
A moment ago, thirty-two people had been laughing at my expense. Now, you could hear the ice melting in Megan’s champagne glass.
Megan stared at my son, her mouth slightly open, the cruelty of her joke forgotten in the wake of his confession. “What do you mean, you’ve been meeting someone?” she whispered.
Kevin didn’t look at her. He kept his eyes locked on me. He looked exactly the way he had at ten years old when he broke his father’s favorite fishing rod and couldn’t figure out how to glue it back together.
“I was let go three weeks ago,” Kevin said, his voice trembling but loud enough for the room. “Restructuring, they said. But it gave me time. Time I needed.”
“Time for what?” Megan snapped, her face flushing an angry red. “Kevin, we have a mortgage! We have two kids! And you’ve been putting on a suit every morning to go do what? Play detective?”
“To find out the truth about my father,” Kevin said.
I gripped the back of the wooden chair I had just vacated. My knuckles turned white.
Robert had been dead for five years. He died of a sudden heart attack on a rainy Tuesday, leaving behind a mountain of debt that swallowed my savings, forced me to sell our family home, and moved me into a cramped, one-bedroom apartment. We were told his small construction firm had gone bankrupt due to his own mismanagement. The shame had aged him ten years in his final months.
“Your father was a failure,” Megan hissed, dropping all pretense of the sweet, overwhelmed mother. Several guests gasped. “He died owing half this town money. You lost your job, and instead of finding a new one, you’re chasing a ghost?”
“He didn’t owe them,” Kevin said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, quiet octave I had never heard from him before. “They owed him.”
Kevin reached into his suit jacket. His hand was shaking. He pulled out a faded, dark blue leather ledger.
My breath caught in my throat.
I recognized it immediately. It was Robert’s private project book. I hadn’t seen it since the day of his funeral. I had assumed the bank auditors took it.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“From Thomas,” Kevin said. “Dad’s old paralegal. He reached out to me the day after I was laid off. He found this misfiled in a storage unit.”
Megan stepped forward, furious. “I don’t care about an old notebook! How are we paying for this party, Kevin? How are we paying for this house?”
Kevin slowly turned to face his wife. The guilt in his eyes was replaced by something cold and unfamiliar.
“We aren’t,” Kevin said softly.
Megan froze. “What?”
Kevin walked over to me. He placed the heavy leather ledger in my hands. The cover was worn soft from my husband’s touch. Feeling it against my skin brought a rush of tears to my eyes.
“Thomas didn’t just find the ledger, Mom,” Kevin said, loud enough for every eavesdropping relative to hear. “He found the original deed to this property. Dad bought this house from the developer before he died. He put it in a blind trust to protect it from the bankruptcy.”
Megan let out a sharp, breathless laugh. “That’s insane. We bought this house. I signed the papers!”
“You signed a lease-to-own agreement managed by the trust,” Kevin corrected her, his voice devoid of emotion. “An agreement I paid into every month.”
Megan’s face drained of color. “Whose trust?”
Kevin pointed at me.
May you like
“Hers. Mom is the sole beneficiary.” He swallowed hard. “Mom, this isn’t my house. It never was. You’re not the free babysitter. You’re the landlord.”
Megan dropped her champagne glass. It shattered against the hardwood floor.
