No More Husband, No More Son novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Orchard Street

At Roz's laundromat Leona finds Brice has called her unwell online, her bank account is closed and her mother's house was sold on a deed signed in Cassidy's handwriting, closed by Brice's own lawyer.

Tuttle's Wash and Fold had twelve dryers, one flickering sign and a back room with a cot.

Roz put a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me before I had my coat off.

"Eat," she said. "Rule number one. You don't plan anything on an empty stomach."

"I have sixty-three dollars," I said. "I can pay for the eggs."

"Put that envelope away before I take offense."

I ate every bite.

Out front a dryer buzzed, and a woman in scrubs shouted, "Roz, come look at this!"

Roz went through the curtain.

I followed her with the fork still in my hand.

Six customers stood around a phone propped against a detergent shelf.

On the screen, my own face looked back at me from the prison gate.

The video had been up for two hours and had four hundred thousand views.

"Because three years ago he let his girlfriend decide my sentence," said the small me on the phone.

Somebody whistled.

"That's her," said the woman in scrubs. She looked up and went red. "Oh. That's you."

"That's me," I said.

"I voted for that man," a bald man said from the folding table. "Twice."

"Well, you can fix that in November," Roz told him, and handed him a dryer sheet.

The woman scrolled to a second video.

Brice stood in front of his dealership with an American flag behind him.

His voice was gentle and sad.

"My wife has been through an ordeal," he said. "She isn't well, and she isn't herself. Please pray for our family."

Cassidy stood at his shoulder, wiping her eyes with a tissue.

Under the video, someone had written: *What a saint.*

I put the fork down on a stack of towels.

"Unwell," I said.

"It's a good move," Roz said, and her face went hard. "A man who calls his wife crazy on Monday can take her kid on Friday."

"He can't just take Milo."

"Honey, he already has Milo. That's his whole plan."

She was right, and neither of us said so again.

I used the laundromat's landline to call my bank.

A recorded voice took my account number, then a person came on.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Pennington, that account was closed two years ago at the request of the joint holder."

"I wasn't a joint holder with anyone. That was my savings."

"The signatures on the closure are on file," she said. "I can't release anything."

"I understand."

I hung up before she could hear my voice crack.

Roz rolled her desk chair over and shoved a laptop in front of me.

"Bank's gone," she said. "What else did you own?"

"My mother's house."

I had said it with confidence.

My mother left it to me when she died, and it was the one thing in my life that was only mine.

It was a little yellow house on Orchard Street with a porch swing and a lemon tree in a pot.

"Then we look at the county records," Roz said. "They're public. A cellmate of mine did a whole year of it."

"A year of what?"

"Reading other people's deeds. She was bored."

She typed the address into the county site.

The page loaded slowly.

The little rotating wheel went around three times.

Then the property record came up, and the owner line did not say Barlow or Pennington.

It said *Orchard Holdings Trust*.

"Sold two years ago," Roz read. "Four hundred and ten thousand dollars."

I stared at the number.

"I never sold it."

"Somebody did."

"I was in a cell. I wasn't even allowed a pen without a form."

Roz scrolled to the bottom and clicked the image of the deed.

It was a scan, slightly crooked.

At the bottom, over the line that read *Seller*, was a signature.

*Leona Barlow Pennington.*

It was my name, written fast and neat, the way I sign at the dentist's office.

At first glance it was mine.

I leaned closer.

"The L," I said.

"What about it?"

"I make mine straight up and down."

The L on the deed had a big loop at the bottom that curled back under the line.

I had seen that loop before.

I saw it every Christmas, in a stack of cards signed *With love from all of us*, the years I'd still been home to open them.

Brice had never written a single one himself.

The loop was Cassidy's.

"Roz," I said, "she signed my name on my mother's house."

Roz took off her glasses and let them hang on their cord.

"Then we know what she took first," she said.

"What do you mean, first?"

She pointed at the line below the signature.

The sale had a second page.

It listed a buyer's address and a name for the attorney who closed it.

The attorney was a man I knew.

He was Brice's own lawyer, the one who had stood next to him at my sentencing.

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