Chapter 3 - The Unraveling of a Lie
The air inside the Phoenix house turned ice-cold.
Chloe came downstairs holding her tablet, her pink tape measure still draped around her neck. "Mom? Why is Dad sitting on the floor? What's going on?"
Gwendolyn didn't answer her daughter. She grabbed Samuel by the lapels of his shirt, hauling him up. Her face was red, her eyes bulging with sheer fury.
"What do you mean she owns the house?!" Gwendolyn shrieked, her voice echoing through the high-ceilinged foyer. "We’ve been married for nine years! I paid for the new kitchen cabinets! I repainted the exterior! You told me this was your family home!"
"It WAS my family home!" Samuel cried out, his voice cracking under the pressure of nine years of buried secrets. "When Eleanor died, she left the house to Paige! She put it in a trust! I only had the right to live here as long as Paige lived here with me peacefully! I was never allowed to throw her out!"
"You lied to me!" Gwendolyn screamed, slapping his shoulder hard. "You let me spend my money on this place! You let me think I was the mistress of this house!"
"You never asked to see the title, Gwen!" Samuel yelled back, finally showing a spine, though nine years too late. "You just assumed! And every time I tried to tell you to go easy on Paige, you threatened to leave me! You forced her out of her own mother's room! I warned you to keep the peace!"
"Keep the peace?!" Gwendolyn mocked hysterically. "You coward! You stood at the dinner table and let me tell her to leave! You didn't say a word!"
"Because I thought she would just take the basement!" Samuel sobbed, burying his face in his hands. "I thought she would just give up like she always does! I didn't know she would call Evelyn!"
Chloe stood on the bottom step, her tablet dropping from her hand and shattering against the hardwood floor. "Wait... so... so the master bedroom isn't mine?"
"No, Chloe!" Samuel screamed, looking up at his stepdaughter with bloodshot eyes. "Nothing here is yours! None of it is mine! Paige owns the ground we are standing on, and her lawyers just gave us seventy-two hours to get out!"
Meanwhile, twenty miles away in Paradise Valley, I was sitting on my poolside deck, enjoying a fresh acai bowl and sipping an iced green tea.
My tablet rested on the glass table beside me, displaying a live security feed from the Phoenix house's doorbell camera. I watched in serene silence as Gwendolyn screamed at my father on the front porch, her frantic gestures looking like a silent, desperate tragicomedy.
My phone rang. It was my father.
I let it ring three times before picking up.
"Hello, Samuel," I said, my voice completely smooth and unbothered.
"Paige! My God, Paige, please!" Samuel gasped into the phone, his breath ragged. "Gwen is having an anxiety attack! Chloe is crying! Please tell your lawyer this is a mistake! We can fix this! You can have the master bedroom back today! Chloe will move into the basement right now!"
"It's too late, Samuel," I replied softly, watching a hawk glide silently across the clear Paradise Valley sky.
"Paige, I’m your father!" Samuel wept into the earpiece. "You can't throw your own father onto the street! Where are we supposed to go?! We can't find a new house in seventy-two hours!"
"Gwendolyn said it best on Thursday night," I said, every word weighted with absolute, unyielding precision. "This is my home, and I will not be challenged at my own table."
"Paige, please—"
"You spent nine years letting that woman erase my mother from that house, Samuel," I cut in, my tone turning to cold iron. "You watched her give away my mother's dishes. You watched her let Chloe ruin my clothes. And on Thursday, you sat there and ate your mashed potatoes while she threw me out of the room my mother designed for me."
"I was trying to keep the peace!" Samuel wailed.
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"No," I corrected gently. "You were buying your own comfort with my suffering. The peace is over, Samuel. You have seventy-one hours left. Make sure Gwendolyn doesn't break anything on her way out. My inspectors will be checking every wall."
I hung up the phone and blocked his number.
