Fifty-three missed calls.
Twenty-nine were from my mother. Eleven were from Derek. Two were from a number I didn't recognize that turned out to be Derek's ex-wife's sister, who apparently still had my number from their wedding and had been asked to "check on" me. And eleven were from my father.
The voicemails from my mother started angry. Where are you? You can't just walk out in the middle of dinner. You're being dramatic. Then they got colder. If you're trying to make a point, it isn't working. Then, somewhere around three in the morning, they changed.
Naomi, call me back. It's about the house. Something's wrong with the account.
I hadn't touched anything yet. Not on Sunday night. All I'd done was read the email thread.
But the household email account shows when a message has been opened. And my mother, lying awake, had checked it. She'd seen that the "Room Setup" thread had been read at 9:47 p.m., from a laptop in a car on the side of Route 9, while she thought I was upstairs sulking.
She knew I knew.
And somewhere in the middle of the night, she had also remembered that the quarterly property tax installment, the one that had kept the county from putting the house on the tax sale list two years ago, came out of my checking account. Automatically. On the first of October.
Three days away.
She hadn't called fifty-three times because she missed me. She'd called fifty-three times because she had just realized she was about to lose the person who kept the lights on, the week before she needed her most.
The calls from Derek were more confusing. Half of them were angry, echoing my mother. Why are you upsetting Mom? She's been crying all night. But the last one, left at 6:12 in the morning, was different. He'd sounded like he was sitting in a parked car.
Nay. It's me. I, uh... I need to talk to you. Please call me.
He hadn't called me Nay since we were kids.
My father's voicemails were the ones I'd listened to most. There were eleven calls but only one message. It was twenty seconds long.
Naomi. It's Dad. I don't know what happened at dinner, not all of it. I'm sorry I didn't say anything. I should have said something. Please just let me know you're safe. That's all. You don't have to call back. Just text me that you're safe.
I had texted him. Two words. I'm safe.
He had replied within a minute. Thank you. I love you.
I had sat in the grocery store parking lot and cried harder than I'd cried at dinner.
Back in the hallway, my mother was holding the letter now, crumpling the edge of it in her fist.
"You can't just stop paying," she said. "The first of the month is Thursday. The county will—do you have any idea what you're doing to your father?"
"I'm not doing anything to Dad," I said. "Dad has a pension. You have your Social Security. Derek is here now, and he's going to be the head of the household. That's what you said on Sunday. You said he needed to feel like the head of a household again."
I looked at my brother.
"Heads of households pay the property taxes, Derek."
He looked like I'd slapped him. And I felt a small, ugly flicker of satisfaction, followed immediately by something heavier. Because Derek wasn't smiling. He wasn't angry. He looked like a man who had driven two thousand miles with two kids in the back seat and found out at the finish line that the ground he'd been promised wasn't solid.
"Mom," he said quietly. "You told me the house was paid off."
My mother turned to him. "It is paid off. The mortgage is paid off."
"You told me there were no bills. You said I could stay here while I got back on my feet and I wouldn't have to worry about anything. You said Naomi was just—" He stopped.
"Just what?" I asked.
He swallowed. "You said Naomi was just living here for free and that she'd been taking advantage of you and Dad. You said she wouldn't leave. You said I'd have to be firm about it or she'd make the kids feel unwelcome."
The words hung there.
