He Let Me Crash on Christmas Eve, So I Took Our Daughter novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: What Peggy Gave Up

Peggy's house had a green door and a sign in the front yard.

I stood on the walk with the knit hat I'd brought her in my pocket and read the word on the sign.

SOLD.

Lorna's husband had driven Nate and me over in the truck without a word.

Nate got out of the cab and stood very still.

"Mom put that up?" he said.

"Go in," I said.

He went up the steps two at a time.

I followed him into the front hall, and the house smelled of tape and old cardboard.

Boxes stood stacked along the wall.

His mother knelt in the living room with a roll of packing tape and her glasses pushed up into her gray hair.

She did not look surprised.

"The lawyer called you," she said. "I thought he might."

"You sold Dad's house."

"I sold my house. Your father's name came off it a long time ago."

"When?" Nate's voice cracked. "When did you do it?"

"The twenty-ninth of December. The day after your wife left you." She pulled a length of tape across a box with a long screech. "The day I saw your face in that hospital, I knew Pilkington would come after me before he came after you."

I stood in the doorway.

I hadn't known any of it.

"Mom, you can't," Nate said. "You don't even know what the loan is."

"I know exactly what it is. I signed it."

She sat back on her heels.

"I signed it at your father's funeral, in the back room of the funeral home, in my black dress. Mr. Pilkington brought the pen himself, and he said it was just a formality so you'd never have to worry about money again. You were standing at the coffin, twenty years old, and I was so tired I'd have signed anything."

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