After Lefting Me on the Bridge, He Lost His Mind novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Get Out of My House

Nobody at the Christmas table moved.

Dorothy held the deed in both hands and looked at it for a long time.

"You forged my name," she said to her younger son.

"Mom, it's a formality. It was only going to protect the house."

"From whom?"

"From the bank. From taxes. From, from Quinton. He'd have sold it the minute you were gone."

"Quinton hasn't asked me for a nickel since he was nineteen."

"Exactly. He wouldn't. That's how he works. He waits."

Quinton's chair scraped back.

Bryce flinched, and I saw it, and so did his aunt.

"Sit down," Dorothy said to Quinton.

Quinton sat.

She put the deed on the table and flattened it with her palm.

"This is a notary stamp," she said. "Whose?"

"A friend."

"Which friend?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to the friend," said Quinton's uncle, who had not said a word all morning. "A notary who stamps a forgery loses his license and goes to prison. You'd do that to a friend?"

Bryce's mouth worked.

"I'd have paid it off before anyone knew."

"With what?" Dorothy asked. "My savings?"

He had no answer.

For the first time that I had ever seen, Bryce had nothing in his face at all.

No smile. No pleading. No plan.

Just a man in a rumpled shirt at the end of a table, with his mother looking at him.

"Mom. You're being dramatic."

"Am I?"

"It's Christmas. Families do this. They fight, and then they forgive each other."

"Families do that when somebody says he's sorry, and means it." She stood. "You have said you're sorry to four people since Thanksgiving. Each time, you wanted something."

"I want you to love me."

"I do," Dorothy said. "That's the problem. It's why you thought you could."

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