Chapter 2 - WHAT BRANDON THOUGHT I OWED HIMI slept at a hotel near Bee Cave that night.
Calling it sleep was generous.
At two in the morning, I sat on the edge of the bed with an ice pack against my left eye and listened to Brandon leave voicemail after voicemail.
The first was furious.
The second was defensive.
By the fourth, he sounded frightened.
“Dad, don't do anything stupid before we talk.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Not I'm sorry.
Not Are you okay?
Don't do anything.
At seven, Amber texted.
He shouldn't have hit you.
Thirty seconds later another message appeared.
But you shouldn't pretend you don't understand why he's angry.
I read it twice.
Then she sent a PDF.
The document was six pages long.
At the top were the words:
REEVES FAMILY RESIDENCE TRANSFER AGREEMENT.
My name appeared on the final page.
Under it was a signature that looked enough like mine to make my stomach tighten.
The document was dated fourteen months earlier.
It said I had agreed that Brandon would receive full beneficial ownership of the house once several “administrative conditions” were completed.
It wasn't a deed.
It wasn't something my estate attorney had prepared.
But someone unfamiliar with real estate law could easily read it and believe the important decision had already been made.
Apparently, Amber had.
I called her.
She answered on the second ring.
“What is this?”
Silence.
“Amber.”
“Brandon said you signed it.”
“I didn't.”
“You told him the house was his.”
“I told my son he would never have to worry about having a roof over his head.”
“That isn't what he told me.”
There it was.
Years earlier, when Elaine was sick, Brandon had come home more often than I had.
I had still been consulting for a defense logistics firm in San Antonio. Two days there. Three days home. Sometimes four days away if a contract went wrong.
Brandon handled medication pickups.
He drove Elaine to oncology appointments.
He sat beside her on the nights when she couldn't sleep.
After she died, guilt turned me generous.
Too generous.
Brandon and Amber's lease in Dallas was ending. Brandon had taken a civilian position in Austin while serving part-time in the Texas Army National Guard.
I told them to move into the guest wing.
No rent.
No deadline.
When Brandon said he wanted to remodel the upstairs rooms because he and Amber hoped to have children, I told him, “Make it feel like yours.”
I could hear those words differently now.
Maybe he always had.
“You knew he thought I transferred it?” I asked.
“Franklin, we put money into that house.”
“How much?”
Another pause.
“Almost two hundred thousand.”
I sat straighter.
“What?”
“You know that.”
“No.”
“Stop doing this.”
“I am not doing anything.”
“Brandon said you approved everything.”
“What everything?”
She breathed out slowly.
“The guest wing. Kitchen millwork. Landscaping. Electrical. The downstairs bathroom.”
I pictured the renovations.
Some I had approved.
Most I had assumed Brandon was paying for from his salary and a loan Amber once mentioned her father providing.
“How much did your father give you?”
“One hundred and forty thousand.”
My bruised face seemed to throb harder.
“And you spent all of it on my house?”
“Brandon managed the contractors.”
Of course he did.
Another memory arrived.
For almost a year, Brandon had insisted on opening the household mail because, as he put it, I was “terrible about paperwork.”
I had laughed.
After Elaine died, I had become terrible about a lot of ordinary things.
He knew it.
I had let him help.
“I want copies of every invoice,” I said.
Amber became defensive immediately.
“Why?”
“Because if you put a hundred and forty thousand dollars into this house, I want to know where it went.”
“It went into your property.”
“Then proving it should be easy.”
She didn't answer.
“Amber?”
“Brandon has the folder.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
I closed my eyes.
On the nightstand beside me sat an envelope I had carried around for nine days.
Inside was an off-market purchase proposal for my house.
A cardiologist and his wife relocating from Houston had toured it privately through a broker I knew from the veterans' foundation board.
They had offered $2.35 million.
Cash.
Thirty-day close.
I had intended to decline.
Brandon loved the place.
Or I had thought he did.
Now I looked at the proposal differently.
“Tell Brandon I won't be home today.”
“What are you doing?”
“Finding out what I actually own.”
Her answer came too quickly.
“Franklin, don't sell the house.”
I hadn't told her about the offer.
I looked at the phone.
“How did you know I was considering that?”
May you like
Silence.
Then the call ended.
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