Part 6
The detective took Dad inside and closed the door. Curtis sat down beside his lawyer, and Valerie guided me toward the exit before another word could pass between us.
They were interviewed separately. Dad described his own certification and Curtis’s role. Curtis dealt with the detective through counsel. He didn’t call me afterward.
Bethany remained in the house for eleven weeks. During that time, the insurer checked the acknowledgment, traced the closing documents, and worked through the approvals necessary to unwind the transfer. I lived in temporary quarters and kept paying for storage.
In the third week she emailed about water under the kitchen sink. I arranged a plumber, copied the lawyers, and waited outside until she came to the door. A bead of water swelled on a connection Dad had installed years before.
I started to bend toward it, then put my hands into my pockets. The plumber set his bucket beneath the cabinet and asked Bethany where the shutoff was.
We inventoried my belongings on two Saturday mornings. Bethany carried a notebook while I opened cartons and identified things: Mom’s wooden recipe box, my cold-weather uniforms, the lamp Dad and I had rewired. She found my framed promotion warrant behind a closet door and laid it faceup on a folded towel.
Anything uncertain stayed put until we could verify it. The mixing bowl stood on the kitchen counter with tangerines in it. I walked past it with an armload of uniforms and didn’t ask again.
By the time the settlement received approval, Bethany had found a smaller place with a broad front porch. Her lawyer examined that closing file line by line. Under the agreement, her lender was paid, her covered equity was restored, and the specified moving losses were reimbursed. She didn’t return clear title until the funds were secure and the lien release was arranged.
On moving day, I arrived at the agreed time and waited beside the car. Bethany came out carrying an envelope with the replacement keys.
Inside, she had swept and filled the nail holes. The bedroom was still the pale green she had painted it. She went to the kitchen, emptied the last tangerine into a grocery sack, and brought me the bowl.
“You should take this now.”
I set the keys down so I could receive it with both hands.
“I’m sorry I waited to warn anyone,” I said. “And that I brought all of that to your door on your first day.”
“I understand wanting to see his face,” she said. “It still put me in the middle.”
“It did.”
She checked the bedroom closet, carried her last carton out, and returned once for the grocery sack. I held the screen door while she went down the steps.
I had already returned to duty by then. Moving back happened around my work schedule, one carload and one delivery at a time. With the frame still at the storage unit, I made up the mattress on the living-room floor. Rain rattled against the kitchen screen, and the refrigerator clicked often enough to wake me.
When I opened the bedroom door in the morning, sunlight lay across Bethany’s green walls. I left the paint alone.
Dad sold his house to return what he could of the diverted proceeds. His lawyer said his cooperation mattered, but repayment and the criminal investigation continued after the civil title agreement was finished. Valerie stopped making predictions when I stopped asking for them.
Curtis closed the shop and turned over its records. Most of what reached me came through lawyers. His one direct message said Mom would have despised what I’d done.
I read it while standing among half-unpacked cartons. Then I set the phone on the kitchen counter and went back to finding the screws for my bed frame.
The following weekend, I installed new locks. I measured the distance from the edge of the door to the center of the old opening twice, the way Dad had taught me. The first deadbolt slid home without catching.
For a while, my old key and the duplicate Dad had returned lay together in the mixing bowl. When I needed the bowl for biscuits, I moved them into a drawer.
For four months, Dad and I spoke only when the lawyers needed something settled. After that, a text began arriving on Sunday afternoons. He warned me about a storm, asked whether I’d checked the flashing above the laundry room, reminded me to wait until late winter to prune the crape myrtle.
He didn’t ask me to contact Curtis. He didn’t suggest changes to a statement. Some weeks I answered; other weeks the message stayed on my screen until the next one arrived.
In March he asked if he could bring the last of my property from his storage unit. We settled on Saturday at ten.
His truck reached the curb two minutes early. I saw it through the front window, but he stayed behind the wheel until I opened the door.
Dad had grown thinner. He came up the walk without the bunch of keys that used to hang from his belt, then stopped at the bottom step. In the truck bed were two lidded bins, my small workbench, and the toolbox he’d carried away the day I returned.
“Tell me where.”
“The bins on the porch. Leave the bench for now.”
We carried the containers together. He put each one where I pointed and didn’t turn toward the open doorway. The toolbox went beside my feet.
When we finished, he rested his hands on the rail.
“Curtis had his attorney tell me not to get in touch.”
“Have you tried?”
“No.”
His thumb moved over a rough patch in the wood. He watched the road for a while, and I let him.
“That can’t be easy,” I said.
“No.”
One screw had worked up from the rail. Dad noticed it beneath his hand and moved his thumb away from the sharp edge.
“Would you like that tightened?”
I knelt and opened the toolbox. The green-handled screwdriver was in its fitted space, its handle polished smooth where his fingers had gripped it for years.
He waited on the lower step while I took it out. Then I placed it in his hand and showed him the screw.