Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE SHE SAID WAS HERS
Vanessa did not get the papers.
I put them inside my coat and called my daughter Catherine.
Not Vanessa.
Not the sheriff.
Catherine.
That choice alone told me how frightened I was.
My daughter and I had not been close in years.
Catherine lived in Fort Collins with her husband and taught accounting at Colorado State. She had spent most of adulthood accusing me of treating Mason as if the sun rose specifically for him.
I had spent most of adulthood telling her that wasn’t true.
After Mason died, I started wondering if she had been right.
“Mom?”
“I fell.”
Her voice changed immediately.
“Where?”
“The cabin.”
“Are you hurt?”
“My face. Maybe my hip.”
“I’m coming.”
Vanessa stood ten feet away listening.
When I ended the call, she crossed her arms.
“You’re going to turn this into another family spectacle.”
I laughed despite the pain.
“You drove up here to take papers from an injured seventy-four-year-old woman.”
“I came because the realtor needs access tomorrow.”
“What realtor?”
“The cabin is being listed.”
I stared at her.
“You told me I could stay through spring.”
“I changed my mind.”
That was how I had ended up there in the first place.
After Mason’s memorial service in Denver, I returned to the Cherry Hills house where I had lived in the attached guest suite for nearly six years.
My furniture was already boxed.
Vanessa stood in the kitchen and told me she needed space.
“You can use the mountain place until you figure something out.”
I was grieving too badly to fight.
The Cherry Hills house was worth close to four million dollars.
I had contributed almost half a million to it years earlier when Mason and Vanessa renovated the property.
Mason had always said, “Mom, you’ll never have to worry about housing again.”
There had been no rent.
No lease.
No reason, I thought, to demand paperwork from my own son.
Vanessa knew that.
At the cabin, she handed me two suitcases and told me the rest of my things would arrive later.
Then she said the words I had told no one until that day:
“Go die in the mountains if that’s what you want. I’m done taking care of Harts.”
I had spent eleven weeks convincing myself she said it from grief.
Now she wanted to sell the cabin too.
Catherine arrived before dusk and took one look at my face.
“What happened?”
“The floor.”
Vanessa interrupted.
“She’s fine.”
Catherine looked at her.
“I didn’t ask you.”
That was the first time in twenty years I felt my daughter stand beside me instead of opposite me.
She drove me to urgent care in Boulder.
Nothing was broken.
My cheek would bruise badly. My eye was swollen. My hip needed rest.
While we waited, I showed Catherine the hidden packet.
She read silently.
Then stopped on page four.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“This is a deed of trust.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I do.”
Her eyes moved across the page again.
“Mason and Vanessa signed it.”
I stared at her.
“For what?”
Catherine looked up.
“For the money you put into the Cherry Hills house.”
The document listed an original principal amount.
$480,000.
May you like
My money.
The money Vanessa had spent eleven weeks pretending never existed.
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