They Excluded Me From the Family, So I Built a New One novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Four New Keys

With her neighbor and his baker sister, Susannah changes every lock before dawn and turns away the realtor on her own porch; the listing names Desmond as owner and Carl Pierce as the buyer.

I got to the Cape after ten that night and parked at the end of the lane with my headlights off.

My neighbor was sitting on his porch rail in a wool cap.

"You didn't have to wait up," I said.

"I'm seventy-four," he said. "I don't sleep. Come in, there's soup."

His kitchen smelled of onions and woodsmoke.

His sister stood at the stove in an apron that said KISS THE BAKER, which she had worn since 1991.

She ran the bakery in town and had fed me every August since my mother died.

"Sit," she said, and put a bowl in front of me before I'd taken my coat off.

I told them everything, and I said it flat.

The chat, the money, the tape measure.

When I got to the photographer, she stopped stirring.

"They don't want you in the pictures," she said.

"No."

"In your own house."

"It's my mother's house."

"Well," she said, "somebody should photograph that."

Her brother hadn't said a word.

He was looking at the floor.

"Your mother put her life into that place," he said at last. "I watched Desmond put a cooler on her mantel last summer, and I thought, that man doesn't know whose house he's in."

"Can you help me change the locks?" I asked.

"I can do better," he said. "My nephew's a locksmith. He'll be here at six."

The nephew turned up at five-forty with a toolbox and a thermos.

He was twenty-six and cheerful and didn't ask a single question.

By seven every door in my mother's house had a new key, and I held all four of them in my fist.

The old house was quiet in the early light.

I walked through it once.

Desmond's golf shoes were in the hall closet, and I carried them out and left them on the porch.

Kenzie's tablet cover was on the sofa, pink, with her initials in glitter.

I put that on the porch too.

Then I made coffee in my mother's pot and sat down at the kitchen table to wait.

The car came up the lane at eight sharp.

A white SUV, freshly washed.

A woman in a gray blazer got out with a camera bag over her shoulder and a rolled-up sign under her arm.

I stepped onto the porch.

"Good morning," I said.

"Oh, hello." She smiled the smile of someone who has been told what to expect. "You must be the wife. Mr. Lockridge said you'd be out of town today."

"Did he?"

"He said you'd be on your way back to Boston by now." She looked past me. "I'm just going to take some exterior shots for the listing, and I'll be out of your hair."

"Which listing?"

"The cottage. He's asked me to list it before the weekend, so we can have it up in time."

I held out my hand.

"May I see it?"

She hesitated, then pulled a folded page from her bag.

The listing agreement was two pages long.

Across the top: "Seller: Desmond Lockridge."

At the bottom, Desmond's signature, which I had seen on every card he ever sent me.

"Is this the deed you were shown?" I asked.

"He said he'd bring it." She was less cheerful now. "Is there a problem?"

I went inside, took the folder from the table, and brought out the copy of the deed the attorney had emailed me at midnight.

"This is the recorded deed," I said. "It's a copy, but you can check it on any county site in about a minute."

She read it standing on my step.

Her mouth went slowly tight.

"The grantee on the deed is Susannah Torrey," she said.

"That's me."

"And the listing says Desmond Lockridge is the owner."

"He isn't."

Across the lane my neighbor had come out to stand on his lawn with his arms folded.

His sister was beside him with a paper bag of muffins she wasn't eating.

The realtor looked at them, then at me.

"Mrs. Lockridge, I want to be clear that I had no idea."

"I'm not Mrs. Lockridge here," I said. "Please take your sign off my property."

She nodded and rolled it up tighter.

She didn't leave straight away.

"He told me the buyer was ready to move," she said. "He said the paperwork was just a formality."

"Who is the buyer?"

She glanced at the page again, then down at her shoes.

"An offer came in on Monday, already signed," she said. "It's from a Mr. Carl Pierce, in Maine. They want to close in thirty days."

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