They Thought I Was Asleep, So I Let Them Keep Lying novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Notice

Her uncle Dale arrives with a realtor and a note claiming her mother owed him eighty thousand dollars; Kate refuses him as the men stand behind her.

I woke up at seven on the couch, in my funeral dress, with the afghan tucked under my chin.

For one second I forgot everything.

Then my skin remembered, and I lay there with my face hot and my eyes on the ceiling.

I had let two men touch me, and I had liked it.

I was going to have to look at them over coffee.

I stood up, and my knees held, so I went to the kitchen to find out how bad it would be.

Devin was at the counter in a gray T-shirt, pouring water into the machine.

He looked at me, and he looked away, and the back of his neck went red.

"Morning," he said. "I was going to... I wanted to say something."

"Say it after coffee."

"Kate, it's important."

"Everything's important this week."

I took a mug from the cupboard and held it out.

His hand shook a little as he poured.

Behind him, through the window over the sink, I saw Cal crossing the yard from the garage with his boots unlaced.

He didn't look at me when he came in.

That told me what they had decided on the stairs.

Cal said nothing, and Devin said nothing, and I stood between them and drank bad coffee and said nothing back.

The doorbell rang.

It rang three times, hard.

My uncle Dale was on the porch in a pressed golf shirt, with a woman in a navy blazer carrying a tablet.

"Katie," he said. "Hope you slept. We need to walk the house."

"We."

"This is the agent who'll list it."

"Dale, it's seven in the morning, and it's my mother's house."

"It's your mother's house with a lien on it." He stepped past me into the hall without being asked.

The agent followed with her eyes on the ceiling beams.

Dale took a folded paper from his shirt pocket and put it on the hall table.

"Eighty thousand dollars," he said. "Joan borrowed it from me when the pharmacy took her insurance. This is the note. She signed it, I held it, and the house is the collateral."

"My mother never took a loan from you."

"Your mother took lots of things from lots of people."

I picked up the note.

The signature at the bottom was a long loop and a tail.

It looked like hers.

It also looked like something I had seen on a hundred birthday cards, and my stomach turned over, because I couldn't say it was wrong.

"She would have told me," I said.

"She told you nothing, because there was nothing to tell. She was proud." He took the paper out of my hand.

"Monday week, the house is listed. You can stay till it sells. I'm being generous."

The agent had opened the front closet.

"You can't go in there," I said.

"Mr. Kincaid has the legal right..."

"Mr. Kincaid has a piece of paper," a voice said from behind me.

Cal had come up the hall without a sound.

He stood next to me, close, one shoulder just short of mine.

Devin came and stood on my other side.

Neither of them touched me.

They simply filled the hall, two tall men in work clothes, and I watched my uncle's eyes go from Cal to Devin to me.

"The tenants," Dale said. "Joan's strays."

"We pay rent," Cal said. "We have a lease that runs two more years."

"Leases end when a house sells."

"Not this one," Devin said. "Joan's lawyer made sure."

I turned and looked at him.

I hadn't known that, and by his face he hadn't meant to say it.

Dale laughed, short.

"You three are very quick to protect a woman who's about to be out on the street."

He said it slowly, taking his time over each word, and I felt the heat climb up my neck.

"Get out of my mother's house," I said.

"Katie."

"Out. Take your agent. You can send everything to me in writing, Uncle Dale, and I'll have somebody read it."

He studied me for a moment.

Then he tucked the note into his pocket and stepped back out onto the porch.

At the bottom of the steps, he turned.

"Before you get brave, ask your two friends what Joan made them promise her."

He walked to his car, and the agent hurried after him with her tablet held against her chest.

I shut the door and stood with my forehead on the wood.

Behind me, nobody breathed.

"What did he mean?" I said. "What promise?"

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