Diane’s scream carried across the frozen yard, and Gordon came out in his slippers, still holding his coffee. She shoved the pages into his hands. “He can’t do this,” she kept saying. I stood by Miles’s car with my hands in my pockets, watching my father’s face change as he read the first page, then the second.

Tiffany burst out behind them in pajamas, phone raised, ready to film. “What is that?” she demanded. Gordon did not answer. He turned to the last page, the one with my signature and a date. His coffee cup slipped from his fingers and shattered on the porch. “Diane,” he whispered, “the deed. He’s had it for nine years.” The color drained from my mother’s face, and she looked up and saw me watching.