Chapter 3 - The Price of Christmas
Ryan returned to the booth without his coffee. "You listed Mom's home as a luxury rental?"
Every spoon stopped moving.
"Not exactly," Natalie said.
"Forty-eight thousand dollars is pretty exact."
Brooke leaned forward. "Wait. Is that money coming to you?"
"I was trying to cover our debts," Natalie said, too loudly. "A company paid a deposit. We would have hosted their clients for the week after Christmas."
"In my mother's house?"
"We live there too."
"We stay there because she lets us."
Colin shoved back his chair. "So you promised all of us a vacation while planning to rent the place to strangers?"
Natalie had imagined a very different conversation: Ryan would be surprised, then grateful when she explained how much money they could make. Instead, he stared at her like she had opened a stranger's mail.
The last year had been brutal. Ryan's contracting business lost a commercial job. Their mortgage on the small townhome across town was overdue. Natalie told herself there was no harm borrowing comfort from a house that would belong to Ryan one day.
"You said your mother would be in Florida," she argued.
"She said she might visit Aunt June. You changed that into permission?"
A diner television showed holiday traffic backed up on Interstate 94. Evelyn was not on that highway. She had taken the old county road to a lawyer's office, where Mara Kline waited with a thick folder and a pot of tea.
"They found the notice?" Mara asked.
"Yes."
"Then we need to discuss the other document."
Evelyn rubbed the edge of the photograph. In it, her late husband Paul was laughing with flour on his sleeve. He had helped design the house and left her something far more important than square footage.
"If I tell Ryan everything today," she said, "he'll think I've been keeping score."
"You have been keeping records," Mara replied. "That's different."
Evelyn's phone lit up with an unknown number. A man said he had already transferred the rental deposit and expected the keys by eight that evening.
"I never authorized a rental," Evelyn told him.
Silence. Then the man said, "Ma'am, somebody sent us a deed with your signature."
May you like
Mara held out her hand for the phone.
"Ask him," she whispered, "to send us that deed."
