Chapter 22: The Empty Line

Ezra's POV

The house on Cathcart Street had a green door that I had not touched in eleven years.

It stood open.

Smoke was coming out of the study window.

I went up the steps in my wedding suit with my wife behind me in her ivory dress, holding her skirt in both fists, and two of my men behind her.

The hall smelled of lilac and burning paper.

My mother had kept lilac in a bowl on the hall table every spring.

Somebody had kept putting it there.

"Gerald," I said.

He was kneeling at the study hearth with a filing box open on the rug.

He fed the fire with both hands, folders, letters, a ledger with a blue cover.

His good coat was off, and his shirt was wet through.

He turned his head and did not rise.

"Go away, Ezra. This is my house."

"It was our mother's."

"She left it to the family trust."

"She left it to me. And you made me sign a paper that said otherwise."

I came into the room.

Sadie came in after me and went straight past, to the hearth, and dragged the box out of his reach.

"You can't..." Gerald started.

She dropped to her knees, in the dress, and put her bare hand into the fire.

I started forward.

She came out with a half-burnt folder, shook it, and slapped the flames off the edge against her skirt.

"Sadie."

"I'm fine." Her palm was red and she did not seem to notice. "Read it."

She held it out.

I opened it on the desk.

The top page had a gold seal and a title: Deed of Transfer, Cathcart Street, to the Maddox Family Trust.

It was the paper I had signed at twenty-seven.

I had not seen it since.

I stood with it in my hands for a long moment.

"Go on," Sadie said, softly. "Every page."

I read every page.

On the last one there was a line for a witness, with a name and an address and a date.

The line was empty.

I read it again.

Gerald had been standing very still behind us.

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