Chapter 15: I Know About the House

Elias's POV

She came to the Somerville apartment on a Thursday evening, after Ingrid had gone home.

I opened the door, and Adeline stood in the hall with a gray archive folder held against her chest.

She hadn't brought a bag from the hardware store this time.

She hadn't brought anything to fix.

"Ten minutes," she said. "I won't sit down."

"You can sit."

"No," she said. "I'd rather say it standing up."

She came into the kitchen and stopped beside the table, where my sketches for the Newton dentists lay in a fan under the lamp.

The new tap stayed silent.

"I know about the house," she said.

I didn't move.

I heard the refrigerator hum, and the street outside, and my own breath.

"I went into the archive on Tuesday," she said. "I wanted to find the Prescott money."

"I found a wire from the Estate of Daniel and Ruth Conant, the week we signed the lease."

She set the folder on the table and opened it to one page.

The line was highlighted in yellow.

"Seven years ago you told me it was a loan from your father's friend," she said. "There wasn't a friend."

"No," I said.

"It was your parents' house."

"Yes."

She nodded slowly.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I picked up the page and looked at it.

It was my signature, in the corner, in a hand much younger than mine.

"You were twenty-five and frightened," I said. "You said you'd lose everything if we missed the deposit. You said it twice."

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