Nora I need to come get some things. My laptop and my work stuff are in the den.
Please don't touch the stuff on the desk, some of it is confidential bank stuff.
She read that one twice.
Six texts from Teresa, each longer than the last, the final one a single paragraph that began I'm not taking sides, sweetheart, and then took one. Your mother has been so lonely. You don't know what it's been like for her. Your father is a good man but he's a closed door. She gave up everything at twenty-one. Everything. And then Papa left the house to you and not to her and she just smiled and said it was fine, and I'm the only one who knows what that did to her. I'm not saying what she did is right. I'm saying she's a person.
Two texts from Linda, Grant's mother. The first said: I am so ashamed of him. The second said: Whatever you need. I mean that. Even if it's against him.
Nothing from her mother. Not one word.
* * *
Priya came back Sunday afternoon with a bag of groceries and her laptop and the expression she wore when she was about to cross-examine a hostile witness.
"I want to ask you something," she said, setting a carton of eggs in the refrigerator. "And I don't want you to get upset, because Bev said no getting upset. Yesterday, when Grant said 'this is my house.' Is it?"
"No. It was Grandpa's. He left it to me. It's in my name. It's my separate property—you told me that yourself, when we got married. You made me keep it out of everything."
"I did tell you that." Priya closed the refrigerator. "So why does he think it's his house?"
"Because he lives in it. Because men say things."
"Maybe." Priya pulled out a chair across from her. "Nora. How many things have you signed this year?"