His Cousin Was His Real Wife, So I Took My Father's Name Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Garage

Clara plays the wife at home, photographs the loan papers and overhears Kyle, Brooke and Joan in the garage: she will sign, because she has nobody.

I mailed the swab from the post office on Harlow Street, and then I drove home to Linden Road and parked in my own driveway.

The porch light was on.

Kyle's truck was in its usual spot, and Joan's gray sedan was parked behind it.

I sat with the engine off and counted to twenty.

Inside the house, someone was laughing in the kitchen.

I had walked up these steps every evening for four years, and my body still knew the way.

"There she is," Kyle said, and came down the hall with his arms open.

He smelled like cedar and the warehouse.

He kissed my cheek, then my mouth, and I let him, because a woman who had learned nothing yet would have let him.

"Did you get it?" he asked.

"The clerk's office closes at three on Thursdays," I said. "I got there at five past. I'll go first thing tomorrow."

"Tomorrow is the bank, babe."

"Then I'll go at eight and meet you there."

He looked at me a half second longer than he needed to.

"Fine," he said. "Mom's here. She brought the lemon cake."

Joan stood at the counter with her glasses pushed up into her silver hair, cutting cake into squares.

"Darling," she said. "You look tired. Come here."

She took my face in her hands and looked at me closely.

I stood still and let her look.

"You've been working too much," she said, and tucked my hair behind my ear, and ran her thumb over the notch.

"A long day," I said.

"Sit and eat something."

Brooke was at the table with a piece of dry toast and a glass of ginger ale.

"I'm not feeling great," she said, and gave me a small tired smile.

It was a kind smile.

I smiled back at her, and it was the hardest thing I had ever done with my face.

I ate half a square of cake, and I tasted none of it.

At seven I said I needed a shower, and I took the folder into the bathroom and locked the door.

I turned the water on and sat on the edge of the tub.

The first page was a bank form with Kyle's company on it. The second was the guarantee.

The third was one paragraph, and I read it twice.

It said the guarantor assigned to the bank "any property now owned or later inherited, from any source, known or unknown."

I had nothing. My mother's house had sold to pay for her care, and I had a car with a dent in it.

Why would anyone write a clause about something I might inherit?

Then I thought of a girl in a yellow raincoat, and of the word "inherited," and I did not breathe for a moment.

I photographed every page with my phone, front and back, and I put the folder exactly as I had found it.

Then I turned off the water, because I couldn't stand the noise, and I opened the window above the tub.

It looked out on the side yard and the garage.

The garage light was on, and the side door stood open an inch.

Three voices came across the grass.

"She didn't pick up the certificate," Kyle said. "She says it was closed."

"It wasn't closed," Brooke said. Her voice shook. "Kyle, what if she looked?"

"She didn't look. She never has."

"The priest told her the husband files it, and she believed him," Joan said, easy and low. "Clara has never looked anything up in her life. That's what I liked about her."

"And if she balks at four-twenty?" Kyle asked.

"She won't balk. You lean on her gently, and you let me do the rest."

There was a small pause, and a clink of something metal.

"I don't like it," Brooke said. "She's been good to me."

"You'll like the house," Joan said. "You'll like the baby. Sit down, sweetheart, you've gone pale."

I stood at the window with my hand flat on the cold glass.

A baby.

"What if she has somewhere to go?" Kyle said.

"She doesn't," Joan said.

I heard the cake knife set down on a hard surface.

"She'll sign," Joan said. "She has nobody."

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