Chapter 10: Friday at Five
Thursday night, Scott called Mom.
She told me about it the next morning over coffee.
She'd answered — I hadn't asked her not to — and they'd talked for almost forty minutes.
"What did he say?" I asked.
Mom wrapped both hands around her mug.
"He cried," she said.
"I haven't heard him cry since your father's funeral."
I waited.
"He said he'd been terrified.
That watching your father decline that way and knowing I was alone in that house and feeling like no one had a plan — it made him feel out of control.
He said the codicil felt like a plan.
Like something solid he could hold onto."
"That doesn't make it right."
"No," she said.
"I told him that."
"What else?"
"He said Megan pushed him.
Not to forge anything — I don't think he thinks of it that way.
But to secure something.
To make sure there was a structure in place." She paused.
"He said she's been worried about money for a long time.
That they've had problems he didn't tell me about."
I looked at my coffee.
"He was going to sell your house to solve Megan's money problems."
"Maybe.
Partly." Mom was quiet.
"He also genuinely believed he'd done more than you.
Than me.
He kept score in his head for two years and he decided the score entitled him to something."
"It didn't."
"No.
But I understand how he got there." She looked out the window.
"That doesn't mean I'm letting him have the house."
At four-fifty-eight, Patricia's email arrived.
I read it at the kitchen table with Mom beside me.
*Scott has agreed to voluntarily withdraw the codicil.
His attorney contacted me at four-thirty.
The paperwork will be filed with the court by end of business tomorrow.
The original will stands.
The property transfers to your mother outright, as your father intended.
No further action required on your part.*
*I'll send the confirmation documents when they're filed.
Well done.*
Mom read it twice.
She didn't cry.
She sat very straight and read it twice and then set my phone down on the table between us.
"Okay," she said.
Just that.
Okay.
I reached over and put my hand over hers.
Outside, the neighbor's dog was barking at something in the yard.
A car went past.
Ordinary sounds.
"I want to go home," Mom said.
"I know."
"Not today.
I want to stay tonight.
But tomorrow."
"I'll drive you."
She nodded.
She picked up her coffee.
"I'm going to call Scott next week," she said.
"Not yet.
But next week."
"You don't have to."
"I know I don't have to." She looked at me.
"He's still my son.
That doesn't go away because he did something wrong." She paused.
"But he's going to have to sit with it for a while first.
And so is Megan."
"And the brochure?"
The corner of her mouth moved.
"He can keep the brochure," she said.
"He might need it someday.
I hope someone handles it better than he did."
I laughed.
It came out louder than I expected.
Mom smiled.
A real one this time, the kind that reached her eyes, the kind I hadn't seen since before any of this started.
The next morning I drove her home.
She unlocked the front door herself, walked into the hallway, and stood there for a moment in the quiet of the house — her house, Dad's house, the one they'd bought together thirty-one years ago and paid off and filled with the ordinary weight of a life.
She hung her coat on the hook by the door.
The same hook it had always been on.
"Thank you," she said.
Not to me.
Or maybe to me.
Maybe to both.
She walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on, and I stood in the doorway and watched her, and the house settled around her like it had been waiting.
---
Some things are worth fighting for — not because they're valuable, but because they belong to someone who earned them.
If you've ever had to stand up for a parent, or watched someone you love be quietly taken advantage of, you know exactly how this feels.
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Have you ever been in a situation where you had to protect a family member from someone who should have been protecting them too?
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