The Buyer's Confirmed

I stayed for dinner. Garrett didn't love the idea — I watched him do the math on it, weighing whether refusing a guest in his aunt's house would look worse than allowing one — and in the end he set an extra place with the enthusiasm of a man setting a mousetrap.

Odessa insisted on "helping" in the kitchen, which meant sitting at the table directing me through reheating a casserole while she told me, in no particular order, about three neighbors who'd died, a cat she used to have, and how proud she was that I'd "turned out decent."

"The house needs work," I said carefully, testing the water. "You thinking of fixing it up, or—"

"Selling," Garrett cut in from the doorway. "Taxes have gotten away from her. It's the responsible thing."

"I don't remember owing anything," Odessa said, frowning down at her hands. "Do I?"

"We've been over this, Aunt Dess." His voice had a practiced patience to it, the kind you use on a child or a customer you're about to overcharge. "The county sent notices. I've been handling it so you don't have to worry."

She nodded slowly, the way you nod at something you've been told so many times it's stopped feeling like it needs to make sense.

I noticed things I hadn't let myself notice yet. A landline phone on the wall, unplugged at the jack. A stack of unopened mail on the counter, all addressed to her, none of it opened. A faint yellow-green bruise circling her wrist, mostly hidden by her sleeve, the kind you get from someone gripping harder than they meant to — or exactly as hard as they meant to.

Garrett's phone buzzed. He stepped onto the back porch to take it, but the window was cracked, and the evening was quiet, and I've spent sixteen years in rooms where men think no one's listening.

"—no, it's fine, don't worry about it," I heard him say. "She's not going anywhere before Friday. Just have the paperwork ready. ... Yeah, the buyer's confirmed, don't push the date."

The buyer's confirmed.

Not a buyer. The buyer. Already lined up. Already waiting.

Four days out, and Odessa Pruitt had no idea she was standing at the edge of losing everything.