Chapter 2 - Why Philip No Longer Owned the House
Paige told me to get dressed.
She did not tell Glenda to leave.
She did not threaten anybody.
She simply looked at the damaged headboard and said, “Demi, photograph this before anyone touches it.”
Philip rubbed both hands over his face.
“Can everybody stop acting like Mom tried to kill someone?”
I stared at him.
“She threw cast iron past my head.”
“She lost her temper.”
Glenda crossed her arms.
“She provoked me.”
Paige looked at her for the first time.
“Mrs. Caldwell, I recommend that you stop speaking.”
“This is family business.”
“Not once you start throwing cookware.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
The truth about the house went back eighteen months.
Philip and I had bought the four-bedroom house in Franklin, Tennessee, three years after our wedding.
I supplied most of the down payment from the sale of a condo I had owned before marriage.
Philip contributed some cash.
We originally took title together.
For two years, that arrangement caused no problem.
Then Philip made what he called his “one unforgivable financial mistake.”
Without telling me, he withdrew $118,000 from our joint brokerage account.
He told me afterward that Glenda’s catering company, Caldwell Table & Events, had been months from collapse.
Glenda had started the company after Philip’s father died.
Philip said she had poured her life into it.
He said thirty employees could lose their jobs.
He said the company had three large events coming that would restore the cash flow.
He said he had intended to replace the money before I ever noticed.
I almost left him.
Instead, we spent four months with lawyers, a marriage counselor and a forensic accountant.
Paige had represented me.
The resolution was not romantic.
It was documented.
Philip transferred his ownership interest in the house to me.
I refinanced the mortgage into my name.
In exchange, I agreed that the transfer and certain other financial adjustments resolved my claim for the money he had taken from our brokerage account.
Philip signed a post-marital agreement confirming the arrangement.
He was not tricked.
He had his own attorney.
He had twenty-one days to review everything.
The closing took place at Paige’s office.
Glenda apparently knew none of this.
She had been living with us for four months while telling neighbors, contractors and delivery people that the house was “Philip’s place.”
I assumed she was being insulting.
Now I realized Philip had deliberately allowed her to believe it.
“Why?” I asked.
We were downstairs by then.
Glenda had locked herself in the guest room.
Philip sat across from Paige and me at the dining table.
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“Because she would’ve taken it personally.”
I laughed without humor.
“Your mother thinks a deed is personal?”
“She would’ve seen it as you punishing me.”
“You transferred the house because you secretly took six figures of our money.”
“I know.”
“Does she know that?”
Philip stared at the table.
Paige closed the green folder.
“Demi.”
Something in her tone warned me.
“What?”
She looked at Philip.
“I think you need to ask why his mother believed he still had an ownership interest now.”
I turned back to him.
Philip’s face went pale.
May you like
That was when I knew the house was no longer just an old argument.
Somebody had been planning to use it again.
Related Stories
