“It looks stubborn,” I said. “Doesn’t it wash off?”
“You know how he is in the tub. Water goes everywhere except on him.”
“I did wash!” Leo shouted. He bounced off the bed and thundered down the stairs.
Mark leaned over and kissed my forehead. Quick and warm.
“You look tired, Kate.”
“I’m fine.”
“Our anniversary is Saturday. Ten years. Are we doing something, or are you going to keep pretending you forgot?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“Good.”
He looked at his phone again. That same soft smile. Then he slid it into his back pocket before I could see the screen.
“I have to run out for an hour,” he said. “Errand.”
“On a Wednesday morning? Don’t you have work?”
“I took the morning. It’s a boring errand. Promise.”
I watched him go down the stairs. I heard the front door close and his car back out of the driveway. I told myself I was being ridiculous.
Grief does strange things to people. My mother used to say that suspicion was just love with nowhere to land. Lately, my love didn’t seem to have anywhere to land at all.
I had a lot on my mind that week. My mother had named me executor of her will. I’d spent the whole summer learning words I never wanted to know. Probate. Letters testamentary. Estate inventory. Her attorney, a gentle old man named Gerald Pruitt with an office above a pharmacy downtown, walked me through every step. He was patient. He never made me feel stupid when I cried in his office, which I did more than once.
Mom left everything to me. She was a widow, and I was her only child. It wasn’t a fortune. Her little two-bedroom house on Alder Street. A checking account with $11,300 in it. And a life insurance policy through her old job at the county library that paid $50,000. The check had come in the mail two weeks earlier. I hadn’t been able to deposit it yet. It was sitting in an envelope in my desk drawer, and every time I opened the drawer, I closed it again.
The house was the hardest part. We’d listed it in July. A young couple with a baby on the way had made an offer of $236,000. The closing was set for Friday at a title company across town. I’d have to sit at a table and sign my name on a stack of papers that said my mother’s house wasn’t hers anymore.
Gerald told me I didn’t have to be there in person. I could sign ahead of time. But I wanted to be there. I couldn’t explain why. It felt like the last thing I could do for her.
So that was my week. A closing on Friday. An anniversary on Saturday. And my husband smiling at his phone like a teenager.
That evening, I carried a stack of clean towels down the upstairs hall to the guest room.
The door wouldn’t open.
I turned the knob again. Locked.
“Mark?” I called. “Why is the guest room locked?”
“Is it?” he called back from downstairs. “Must be stuck. I’ll take a look in a minute.”
“Do you have the key?”
“Somewhere around here,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
I stood with my hand on that doorknob for a long time.
Then I walked away. Because that’s what a sensible wife does. That’s what a woman who trusts her husband is supposed to do.
Specialty: Legal & Financial Drama
Michael Carter covers stories where money, power, and personal history collide. His writing often explores courtroom battles, business conflicts, and the subtle strategies people use when pushed into a corner. He focuses on grounded, realistic storytelling with attention to detail and believable motivations.