My mother-in-law moved my sister-in-law into my house to give birth without even asking me.

Richard didn't argue when I arrived on Saturday.

He opened the garage door without a word, and there it was — my grandmother's armchair, pushed to one side behind a set of golf clubs and two boxes of Christmas decorations.

The upholstery was slightly dusty but undamaged.

Eric was standing in the doorway to the house.

He had clearly been watching for my car.

He looked like a man who had not slept well in two weeks, which was probably accurate.

"I didn't know about the armchair," he said.

"That was Richard's idea."

I looked at him.

"I know you didn't know," Richard said from behind me, which was unexpected.

He was leaning against the garage wall with his arms crossed.

He didn't look at Eric when he said it.

"I thought it was worth something.

I was wrong."

"It is worth something," I said.

"It belonged to my grandmother."

Neither of them said anything.

The removal men carried the chair to the van carefully, which I appreciated.

I watched them secure it and then turned back to the garage.

Eric had come down from the doorway.

He was standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, in the posture of a man who wants to say something and hasn't found the right shape for it yet.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For which part?"

He didn't answer immediately.

"All of it," he said finally.

"The dinner.

What I said.

Letting my mother — " He stopped.

"I let things happen that I shouldn't have let happen."

"Yes," I said.

"You did."

"I know you don't want to hear about Gemma."

"I don't."

"But I want you to know it wasn't — I wasn't happy.

I hadn't been happy for a long time.

I should have said that instead of — " He gestured vaguely toward the house, toward the past three weeks, toward everything.

"Eric." I looked at him directly.

"You weren't unhappy.

You were comfortable.

There's a difference.

You were comfortable with my income, my house, my silence.

When I stopped being silent, you told me to watch my mouth." I held his gaze.

"That's not unhappiness.

That's entitlement."

He looked at the ground.

"I know," he said quietly.

The removal van was ready.

I walked toward it.

"The forty-two thousand clears by the thirtieth," I said.

"Claire will confirm receipt.

If it doesn't clear, you know what happens next."

"It will clear."

I got into the passenger seat of the van.

As we pulled out of the driveway, I looked back once.

Eric was still standing in the garage doorway.

Richard had gone back inside.

Eric raised one hand — not a wave exactly, more the gesture of a man acknowledging something he couldn't name.

I faced forward.

The armchair was behind me, wrapped in moving blankets, held steady by two good straps.

It smelled faintly of dust and old fabric and something underneath that — something I couldn't identify precisely but that felt, unmistakably, like the house I had grown up in.