After a while I called Ellen back.
"I read it," I said. "The true part stings, but it doesn't change the plan."
"Good," Ellen said. "Because here's what I want you to hear: his lawyer's response is weak where it matters. They don't address Eleanor's statement. They don't address your mother's note. They don't explain why a woman who 'knew exactly what she was signing' asked her neighbor a week later what she'd signed. Bluster about Singapore is not a defense to undue influence. It's noise."
"So what now?"
"Now," Ellen said, "we offer him a way out that doesn't require him to admit he's a villain. Mediation. A neutral room, a signed rescission, sixty days to move. His lawyer will advise him that the paper trail is bad. And Diane — I've seen his type. He'll take the exit if we make it wide enough."
I thought about Tina in the dawn kitchen. About Josh on the porch steps. About my mother behind her locked door.
"Make it wide," I said.
Chapter 15: Josh in the Middle
The fourteen days expired on a Monday. Mark's refusal stood. Ellen's offer of mediation went out on Tuesday.
And Josh — fifteen, quiet, elbows — got caught in the middle of all of it, the way children always do when the adults decide to have their war.
It started with shouting. I was working on the porch on Wednesday afternoon when I heard it through Margaret's kitchen window — Mark's voice, raised, and my mother's voice, small and placating, the way she'd sounded when I was a teenager and my father was in one of his moods. I was on my feet before I'd decided to move, but by the time I reached the kitchen, it was over. Mark was gone — out the back door, the screen slamming — and Margaret was standing at the sink with her hands gripping the edge, knuckles white.
"What was that about?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"Nothing," Margaret said. "Your brother's under pressure. He didn't mean it."
"Mom."
She turned, and her eyes were bright with tears she wouldn't shed. "He asked me about the tin. He wanted to know what I'd told you. I told him the truth — that I'd told you where it was, because it's mine to tell. He said some things are family business." She tried to smile. "I told him I am family, and so is the business."
I wanted to go after Mark. I wanted to say things that would have felt good for about ten seconds and poisoned everything for months. Instead I put my arms around my mother, and she leaned into me, and we stood there in the kitchen with the afternoon light coming through the window, two women holding each other up.
Josh was standing in the hallway. I saw him over Margaret's shoulder — he'd heard everything, and his face was doing something complicated.
Later, when Margaret was napping, I found Josh in the backyard, throwing a tennis ball against the garage wall with more force than the game required.
"Your dad's under a lot of pressure," I said, sitting on the back steps. It felt disloyal to Margaret to say it, and disloyal to Josh not to.
"He shouts at Grandma," Josh said, not looking at me. "He never used to. Or maybe he did and I didn't notice. Mom cries in the bathroom with the fan on so we can't hear."
I felt something crack in my chest. Fifteen years old, and he was cataloging his parents' pain the way I'd cataloged project risks in Singapore — quietly, thoroughly, alone.
"Josh," I said, "what's happening between the adults isn't your fault, and it isn't your job to fix. Your job is to be fifteen. To do your homework and throw that ball and love your grandma. Can you do that?"
"I love Grandma," he said fiercely. "She taught me to make biscuits. Dad says — Dad says you only came back for the house."
It was Mark's voice coming out of his son's mouth, and I could see Josh hated saying it even as he said it.
"Do you believe that?" I asked.
Josh threw the ball hard against the wall. It bounced back and he caught it without looking. "I don't know what I believe. Dad says one thing, you say another, and Grandma just looks tired." He finally looked at me. "Did Grandma really not know what she signed?"
"She was on strong medication, Josh. She told me, and Eleanor, and Ellen, the same thing: she didn't understand. I believe her."
He nodded slowly, the way he had on the porch steps weeks ago. "Okay," he said. "Okay."
We sat in silence while he threw the ball. After a while he said, "Mom says we're probably going to have to move."