Chapter 7 - CALEB KNEW ABOUT THE LAND
I should have been surprised.
I wasn’t.
Something about Russell’s panic and Caleb’s sudden return fit together too neatly.
Sheriff Harland was still parked across the street speaking with Thomas.
When he saw Caleb, he got out of his cruiser.
Caleb noticed.
His expression hardened.
“What is this?”
“My house.”
“Our house.”
“You left.”
“I’m still on the mortgage.”
“And apparently you remembered that today.”
He looked past me into the house.
“Let me in, Mallory.”
“No.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“You can talk from the porch.”
His jaw tightened.
This was the Caleb I knew at the end.
The charming version came first.
The wounded version came second.
The angry version arrived when neither worked.
“You have no idea what you’re involved in.”
“Then explain it.”
He glanced toward Sheriff Harland.
“Privately.”
“No.”
His eyes moved to my stomach.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
That sentence used to frighten me.
Now it irritated me.
“You lost that privilege when you disappeared.”
He exhaled sharply.
“I didn’t disappear.”
“You moved money, stopped paying the mortgage, left me pregnant, and changed your number.”
“I was trying to fix things.”
“With Blue Ridge Residential?”
His face changed.
There it was.
The name mattered.
“How do you know about them?”
“Mrs. Whitcomb.”
Caleb cursed under his breath.
I gripped the doorframe.
“You knew about the title problem.”
He looked away.
“You don’t understand.”
“Try me.”
He stepped closer.
Sheriff Harland called from the sidewalk.
“Caleb, stay where you are.”
Caleb froze.
Apparently they knew each other.
That was another unpleasant discovery.
I turned back to my husband.
“What did you do?”
His voice dropped.
“I signed a purchase option.”
“For my house?”
“For the property after foreclosure.”
My knees nearly weakened.
“You arranged to buy it back?”
“No. Blue Ridge did.”
“And you?”
“I was supposed to get a finder’s fee.”
I stared at him.
The cruelty was almost too complete to process.
Caleb hadn’t simply failed to save our home.
He had profited from losing it.
“You let me think the bank was taking my house because of missed payments.”
“You did miss payments.”
“Because you emptied the account.”
“I was trying to keep us from bankruptcy.”
“No.”
I looked toward Mrs. Whitcomb’s dark house.
“You were trying to make me desperate enough not to fight.”
Caleb’s face twisted.
“That old woman should have stayed out of it.”
Sheriff Harland heard that.
So did Thomas, who had stepped onto Mrs. Whitcomb’s porch.
Thomas called out:
“Interesting choice of words.”
Caleb turned.
Thomas held up a document.
“Especially since Mrs. Whitcomb recorded a phone call with Russell Keene last week.”
Caleb went pale.
“What call?”
May you like
Thomas looked at me.
“The one where Russell mentioned Caleb by name.”
