Chapter 21: Nothing to Sign

The call from the bank came Wednesday morning, while I was folding my mother's coats into boxes.

"Mrs. Roark, the title company returned the wire," the voice said.

"A hundred and forty thousand dollars, back in the joint account. It posted at nine."

I sat down on the edge of my mother's bed.

"All of it?"

"All of it. Including the amount that came from the estate."

I thanked her and hung up and sat there with my hand over my mouth.

The blue house on Fenwick Lane was not going to happen.

Somebody else would sit on that porch swing.

It would not be Paula.

At two that afternoon I walked into a glass conference room on the ninth floor of a law firm downtown.

My own lawyer, a tidy woman in her fifties, held the door.

Calvin sat across the long table in a gray suit.

He had shaved badly, and there was a small cut under his chin that nobody had told him about.

Beside him sat a lean man with silver cuff links, who was introduced as his attorney.

"Mrs. Roark," the man said, and slid a stapled document across the glass.

"My client would like this resolved quickly and with dignity."

"I'm sure he would."

"We're prepared to be generous."

I didn't touch the paper.

"Go on," my lawyer said.

"Mr. Roark will leave the Maple Avenue house to Mrs. Roark outright."

"He will pay eighty thousand dollars from the returned funds, and he will keep his interest in the firm."

"His interest," I said.

"His partners have discussed his position." The man cleared his throat. "He remains a partner, for now."

Calvin watched me with his hands folded on the table.