Chapter 3: The Price of My Name
“What is this?” I asked.
Ethan reached across the table, but I pulled the document against my chest.
“It’s an unfinished application,” he said.
“It means nothing.”
Caleb tapped the first page.
“It’s a quitclaim deed.
It transfers Claire’s share of this house to you.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Then explain her signature.”
Ethan looked at me.
“You signed several papers after Nora was born.
You probably forgot.”
I pushed the document toward him.
“I remember every paper I signed.”
“You were exhausted, Claire.”
“I was exhausted, not unconscious.”
Caleb removed a bank statement from the envelope and placed it beside the deed.
A yellow circle surrounded one transfer.
“Forty-eight thousand six hundred dollars,” he said.
“It left your joint savings account three days after Ethan left.”
My chair scraped backward.
“That was our emergency fund.”
“I moved it temporarily,” Ethan said.
“Where?”
“Into an investment.”
“What investment?”
Ethan’s mouth tightened.
“Something that could give us a better life.”
Caleb unlocked his phone.
“Would that be the Harbor View Inn?”
Ethan’s face changed.
Caleb turned the screen toward me.
It showed a photograph of a white building overlooking the water.
Beneath it was a message from Vanessa.
Once Claire signs, the equity money covers the deposit.
Then we can finally start over.
“You planned to buy this with her?” I asked.
“Vanessa was helping me evaluate it.”
“From her bedroom?”
“That’s enough, Claire.”
“No.
Enough was the night you walked past your sick daughter carrying a suitcase.”
Nora began crying upstairs.
Ethan glanced toward the ceiling, then back at the papers.
“Keep your voice down,” he said.
I stared at him.
“Now you’re worried about the children hearing us?”
He stepped closer.
“Caleb is using you because his marriage failed.
If you’re foolish enough to trust him, that’s your problem.”
Caleb stood between us.
“Take one more step and this conversation ends.”
“This is my family.”
“You left your family.”
Ethan grabbed the bank statement and tore it down the middle.
Caleb calmly pulled another copy from the envelope.
“I brought six,” he said.
Ethan’s phone rang.
Vanessa’s name flashed again, but he silenced it.
“Call the bank,” I said.
“Put the money back tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because the deposit is nonrefundable.”
My fingers tightened around the deed.
“You used our children’s security to buy a future with someone else.”
“You made our home unbearable.”
“No, Ethan.
Bottles and laundry made it inconvenient.
You made it unsafe.”
His patient smile disappeared.
“Be careful what you accuse me of.
A court might ask why a married man was sitting in your kitchen with your children upstairs.”
“Caleb arrived forty minutes ago.”
“Can you prove that?”
Caleb raised his phone.
“Yes.”
Ethan looked at him, then at me.
“You two planned this.”
“I didn’t know his name three weeks ago.”
“But you let him into my house.”
“Our house,” I repeated.
“And you are leaving it.”
He laughed once.
“You can’t throw me out.”
I picked up his suitcase, opened the front door, and pushed it onto the porch.
“Watch me.”
Ethan stopped beside me.
“If you call the bank, I’ll tell them you signed willingly and changed your mind.”
“I’ll tell them to compare the signature.”
“They already did.”
A chill moved through me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means the document was witnessed and notarized.”
“By whom?”
Ethan lifted his suitcase.
“Ask Ryan.”
“You said you were staying with him.”
“I said many things you were happy to believe.”
He stepped onto the porch, then turned back.
“You have until noon tomorrow to stop fighting me, Claire.”
“Or what?”
May you like
His eyes moved toward the staircase where Nora was crying.
“Or by tomorrow afternoon, this won’t be your house—and you may not be the one deciding where our daughters sleep.”
