Chapter 4 - What Mom Never Promised
Gwendolyn claimed my mother promised Dad the house outright before she died.
That was impossible.
“You mean Dad told you Mom promised him?”
“He showed me a letter.”
“What letter?”
She hung up.
Maya and I drove to the county recorder’s office.
Then Maya found an attempted filing from three years earlier.
A quitclaim deed.
It would have transferred my sixty percent to Dad.
Rejected.
Reason: invalid notarization.
The signature was mine.
Again.
I stared at the screen.
“Three years?”
Maya nodded.
“So the loan wasn’t the first time.”
That afternoon, Chloe showed up at my hillside house.
She stood outside looking up at the glass walls.
Her mouth was open.
I let her in.
“This is yours?”
“Yes.”
“You bought this?”
“Yes.”
“With what money?”
“Mine.”
She looked offended by that answer.
Then she started crying.
Not fake crying.
Real.
“Mom says you’re shutting down my company.”
“I froze a loan that used my house as collateral.”
“I didn’t know.”
I believed her.
“What did she tell you?”
“That Dad owned the house.”
“He doesn’t.”
“She said you lived there because he felt sorry for you.”
I laughed once.
Chloe looked embarrassed.
“She said your business failed.”
“My business sold.”
“For how much?”
“Not relevant.”
She wandered to the window overlooking the valley.
Then she whispered, “Mom said once my launch happened, we’d refinance and pay everything back.”
“From what?”
“She said Dad had another property.”
I turned.
“What property?”
“I don’t know. Something Mom got after your mother died.”
My heart stopped.
“Mom got?”
Chloe nodded.
“She called it the Mesa parcel.”
I had heard that name once.
In my mother’s will.
A six-acre commercial parcel in Tempe.
It was supposed to belong to me at twenty-five.
May you like
I had turned twenty-five four months ago.
Nobody had mentioned it.
