Chapter 24: The Keys

The closing was held in a small office above a bank, at a glass table with a bowl of wrapped mints on it.

I knew the table.

I had sat at one just like it in Seattle, with a hand on my knee.

This time the hands on the table were mine.

Margot sat beside me with hers folded in her lap, and she had promised to say nothing.

"I'm only here for the pen," she had told the agent in the hall.

The agent was a brisk woman with silver rings, and she laid the contract in front of me and squared the pages.

I read the top line.

BUYER: Nathan Boyle.

I read it again, because I had learned to.

"It's spelled right," Margot murmured.

"Facilities did it?"

"I had them redo it."

The agent looked at me, not at her.

"Sign here, here and here," she said.

The down payment sat in escrow, a hundred eighty-six thousand dollars of mine, back where it belonged.

None of it was in anyone's name but mine.

I took the pen.

My hand was steady, and I wrote my name the way I had signed every sketch, with the date beside it.

Margot did not breathe until I had finished.

"That's it?" I asked the agent.

"That's it, Mr. Boyle. Congratulations. Here are your keys."

She slid a ring across the glass.

It held two keys, one brass and one silver.

I thanked her, and picked up the ring, and put my other hand over Margot's in her lap.

The house stood on a quiet street, three stories of dark brick with a stoop and a bay window.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Home She Built With Someone Else from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.