Chapter 8 - THE HOUSE THEY COULDN’T TAKE
I didn’t chase Linda.
I didn’t need to.
For four years, I had been the person chasing everyone else.
Chasing bills.
Chasing Daniel’s promises.
Chasing Linda’s approval.
Chasing some version of marriage where eventually my husband would choose me without needing to be asked.
I was finished.
Three days later, Daniel returned alone.
He stood outside the Malibu gate.
I spoke to him through the intercom.
“Emily, please.”
“There’s nothing left to discuss today.”
“My mother made the submission.”
“And you gave her my information.”
Silence.
“I didn’t think she’d actually do it.”
That sentence ended whatever tiny piece of me still wanted an explanation.
He had known enough to be afraid.
Just not enough to protect me.
“I love you,” he said.
I closed my eyes.
Maybe he did.
But love without loyalty had become an extremely expensive word.
“I hope you figure out what that means someday, Daniel.”
I ended the call.
From the living-room window, I watched him stand outside for another minute before returning to his car.
Claire was at the dining table organizing the documents.
She lifted one final envelope.
“This was mixed in with the lender records.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
I opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of an older property document involving Linda’s Los Angeles house.
I expected another loan.
Instead, I saw my own name.
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
Claire came closer.
I read the page again.
The document predated Daniel’s failed business loan.
It predated Linda demanding rent.
It even predated my marriage.
Yet somehow—
my name was there.
Claire stared at the date.
“That’s impossible.”
I thought so too.
Until I saw the signature beneath mine.
My father’s.
I sat down slowly.
My father had died believing Daniel’s family barely knew anything about our finances.
But this paper suggested he had dealt with Linda years before I married her son.
And suddenly, the forged loan application wasn’t the question frightening me most.
The real question was why my father’s name was connected to Linda’s house at all.
My phone rang.
Daniel.
I let it ring.
Then a message from Claire’s attorney arrived.
She read it once and looked up at me.
Her expression had changed completely.
“Emily…”
“What?”
She placed the phone face down.
“I think we need to find out who actually paid for Linda’s house.”
And for the first time since my suitcase had crashed across that marble floor, I realized Linda might not have been trying to make me pay for her home.
May you like
She might have been terrified I would discover it had never truly been hers to begin with.
Hard stop.
