By sunrise, I had already signed away the house.
By breakfast, my brother slid the folder back across the kitchen table like it was a greasy coupon I’d handed him by mistake.
“I don’t want your guilt, Michael,” he said.
His voice was flat.
Too flat.
“I want my life back. Can your lawyer do that?”
The folder stopped against my wrist.
Inside it was everything I had done in a panic after reading his notebook.
The house.
The trust.
The coverage for his bills.
Ten years of support.
All the things that had felt enormous when I was sitting in that law office with a pen in my hand and my chest full of shame.
Now it looked thin.
Paper always does when you stack it against four years of someone’s life.
“I’m not trying to buy forgiveness,” I said.
Dave let out a laugh so small it barely qualified as sound.
“That’s exactly what you’re trying to do.”
He stood at the sink in the same wrinkled funeral clothes from the day before.
He hadn’t shaved.
His shoulders were rounded forward like his bones had given up the idea of standing straight a long time ago.
The kitchen smelled like stale coffee, cold ham from the funeral trays, and the medicinal sweetness that had soaked into every wall of the house during Mom’s last years.
I hated that I only noticed it now.
“You think I want the house?” he asked.
He turned around and looked at me.
Really looked at me.
“You think this is about square footage?”
“No,” I said too quickly.
“Yes,” he said. “You do. Because money is the only language you know how to speak when things get ugly.”
And what he said next made that signed deed feel smaller than dirt.
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