Chapter 20 - The San Marcos Deed
Saturday morning arrived with a cold, damp drizzle that turned the limestone sidewalks of Austin into slick ribbons of gray grease. Sarah was already in the kitchen, grinding dark roast coffee beans in an electric mill that sounded like a miniature jet engine taking off inside the apartment.
"He's still down there, isn't he?" Sarah asked without turning around, her fingers steady as she poured boiling water over the filter cone.
"Who?" I asked, sitting down at the wooden table with my pre-algebra notebook open to page 42.
"Your father. Or his truck, at least. The doorman called at six to report an abandoned Ford F-150 with a Buda plumbing placard blocking the service entrance."
I took a sip of my orange juice. "He's not abandoned. He's just waiting."
"For what? A miracle from the Travis County probate court?" Sarah scoffed, setting a white ceramic mug of coffee down in front of me before pouring her own. "Tom dug his own grave the minute he let Karen walk into that house and start throwing away your childhood to impress her country club friends. You can't resurrect a marriage with a quitclaim deed and a half-empty pack of Marlboros."
"He brought the red journal," I said.
Sarah stopped mid-sip, her mug hovering an inch below her lower lip. Her hazel eyes narrowed, the same sharp corporate look she used when a competitor tried to hide a liability clause in the fine print of a corporate merger.
"The red one? The one Helen kept during her first year at the clinic?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
"It’s not about the money, Aunt Sarah," I said, looking down at the blue ink lines in my notebook. "It’s about the fact that he knew. He knew she was sick, he knew she was right about the house, and he still let Karen make me feel like I was crazy for wanting to keep a sixty-five-dollar costume."
Sarah set her mug down with a sharp *clack* that rattled the porcelain against the wood.
"Listen to me, Lily," she said, her voice dropping into that cold, absolute register that brooked no argument. "People like your father don't change because they read an old diary. They change because the world stops giving them credit. If you want to go down there and hand him a pen so he can sign away whatever dignity he has left to pay off Karen’s divorce lawyer, that's your choice. But remember one thing: once you sign someone else's paperwork, you're the one who has to live in the house they built."
May you like
I didn't answer. I stood up from the table, grabbed my denim jacket from the back of the chair, and walked out the front door without looking back.
***
