Love After Layoffs novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Piano

I threw my clothes on and went down the stairs two at a time.

Brooks was behind me, zipping his jeans, his hair standing up in every direction.

"Let me handle it," he said.

"No. It's my house."

I yanked open the front door.

The cold hit my face.

Justin stood on the lawn with his phone raised, filming the doorway, and he lowered it slowly when he saw me.

"Good morning," he said. "You look rested."

"You're on my lawn."

"I'm picking up my property. Eight o'clock, I wrote. They're early. That's their problem."

Two men in gray coveralls were wheeling a flat dolly up my front walk.

Behind them, a truck with its ramp down idled at the curb, belching white smoke into the cold.

"Which property?" I said.

"The piano, Janine. It's an asset. I'm taking an asset."

My mother's upright piano stood in the front room against the east wall, where it had stood since the day we moved in.

It was dark walnut with chipped ivory keys, bought secondhand by my grandmother in 1961.

Under the lid, in pencil, my mother had written her name at age nine.

"No," I said.

"I paid the tuner for six years."

"You paid a tuner. You didn't pay for the piano."

"Boys," Justin said to the movers. "Go ahead."

The men looked at each other.

One of them shrugged and started up the porch steps.

I stepped into the doorway and put both hands on the frame.

"You take one step inside," I said, "and I call the police."

"Call them." Justin smiled. "It's marital property."

"Then I'm calling."

I took out my phone and dialed 911 with my thumb, and I put it on speaker so he could hear.

A dispatcher answered.

"I'd like to report a theft in progress," I said. "Two men with a truck are trying to take a piano out of my house."

Justin's smile slipped.

Doors began to open down the street.

First the woman from next door, in her quilted coat, holding a mug.

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