Chapter 3 - The Room With No Handle
Doctor Aisha Reed didn't call it a family disagreement. She called Ricardo into the corridor and described dehydration, untreated swelling in Arturo's ankle, and injuries that needed careful documentation. She asked Arturo's permission to contact the hospital social worker. He agreed.
"He's alert," Reed said. "His age doesn't erase his ability to tell us what happened."
Ricardo thought of every time Celeste had said his father was becoming confused. He had nodded, distracted by work, believing he'd deal with it when he got home. Now his father's wrists looked like someone had tried to teach him not to reach for a doorknob.
Arturo asked for Scout three times. Ricardo promised the dog was safe with their neighbor Mrs. Bell. Then he asked about the locked bedroom.
"It started after the spring fundraiser," Arturo said. "First she took my car keys because I shouldn't drive. Fair enough. Then my phone. She said I called people too much. Later she started bringing my meals upstairs. If I complained, she skipped the next one."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I tried. Your messages came back telling me to stop exaggerating."
Ricardo pulled out his phone. There were no messages from his father for nearly a month. Instead, his sent folder showed short, cruel replies he didn't remember writing.
"You never answered my calls," Arturo continued. "Then I found out my phone had been hidden in the laundry room."
Ricardo remembered Celeste borrowing his laptop the night before he left, saying she needed to print a school form. He had handed it over without looking.
Arturo gripped the edge of the blanket. "Yesterday she said I'd go to a care home if I didn't sign away Mercer Street. She told me nobody would believe an old man who talked to a dog."
Mercer Street. The low brick workshop where Arturo had repaired furniture for forty years. Behind it stood six little apartments he rented below market rate to people who had nowhere else to go. He had always said the building would outlast them both.
"The workshop is yours," Ricardo said. "She can't sell it because she wants to."
Arturo shook his head. "She says you already gave permission."
"I didn't."
"Then why did she have your signature?"
Ricardo had no answer. As he reached for his phone, the hospital social worker arrived with a tablet showing an online property filing. A transfer request had been submitted that morning.
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The buyer was a company Ricardo had never heard of.
The contact person was his own chief financial officer.
