Chapter 3: Sunday Service
That Sunday, Gloria and Tammy left at ten-fifteen for church, the way they did every Sunday, in my Lexus, because Tammy’s hatchback doesn’t start in the cold.
“Don’t wait lunch,” Gloria said. “We’re staying for fellowship.”
I waited eight minutes. Then I called a ride.
The gray house on Clayton Avenue had a wreath on the door and a stroller on the porch. My Lexus was parked out front.
I stood across the street under a bare sweet gum tree with my cardigan buttoned to the neck and watched my mother-in-law sit on another woman’s porch swing with a baby in her arms.
He wore a little white knit outfit. Gloria bounced him on her knee and kissed his cheek, and I heard her through the cold air: “Come to Grandma, little Derek.”
A young woman came out with two mugs. Honey-blond waves, a cream sweater dress, a diamond pendant at her throat that I’d bet cost $3,900. Ashley. Tammy came out behind her, eating a cookie.
Then Derek’s truck pulled into the driveway. The man who’d been “in Nashville since Friday” climbed out with a box of diapers on his shoulder and kissed Ashley on the mouth while his mother clapped.
I didn’t cross the street. I want credit for that. I took four photos, zoomed in on every face, walked to the corner, and rode home.
Monday morning, I called Nora Kessler.
Nora was my father’s lawyer for thirty years. She drafted the promissory note when I put money into Derek’s company, because Dad’s rule lived in her head too. She’s sixty-four, with cropped white hair, red reading glasses and the calmest frightening voice I’ve ever heard.
She read the statements, the truck history, my photos. She watched Gloria say till Claire signs the loan twice.
“What loan?” she asked.
“I don’t know of any loan.”
“Then they’re about to tell you about one.” She opened a fresh folder. “Let’s make sure that when they do, you have nothing they can take.”
What she told me over the next hour, in order:
The house was mine alone. Inherited, titled in my name, never refinanced, Derek never added to the deed. “In Kentucky, that’s nonmarital property,” Nora said. “He can’t touch it unless you sign it over or put it up as collateral.”
“Collateral,” I said. “For a loan.”
“For a loan.”
The $250,000 I’d lent Vance Outdoor Living was a note payable on thirty days’ written demand. Dad’s idea. Nora’s paper.
My savings and my parents’ accounts could go into a trust in my name, with my sister in Raleigh as successor trustee, out of reach of any family emergency.
The cards on my account could be shut off with one phone call. “Not yet,” Nora said. “The day you’re ready. Not one day before.”
“You have to do all of this quietly,” she said. “No scenes. If he knows, he’ll drain the company before you can call the note. Can you smile at these people for a few more weeks?”
I thought about Mom’s china in the trash. “I’ve been doing it for fourteen months.”
So I smiled. For six weeks, I smiled.
I sent the demand on the note through Nora’s office, to the company’s registered agent, who happens to be Derek’s accountant, who happens to be terrified of Nora. I signed the trust papers on my lunch break. I made the gravy hotter than the surface of the sun. I told Gloria her hair looked nice.
And I called Dr. Ruth Okafor, a cardiologist at St. Joseph’s who’d been hunting for a house near the hospital for a year. She walked through on a Tuesday afternoon while Gloria and Tammy were at “Bible study.” She stood in my mother’s piano room for a long time.
“I want it,” she said. “When can we close?”
“December eighteenth,” I said. “You can have the keys on the twenty-first.”
On December 11th, Derek texted me from “Nashville.”
Big news babe!! Bank approved the expansion loan, 400K. They just need your personal guarantee since the house is in your name. Banker’s coming to our anniversary party Saturday so you can sign in front of everybody. Mom invited my cousin Ashley too. Be nice to her. ❤️
Derek doesn’t have a cousin Ashley.
