I see no reason to change it.
The North Carolina Real Estate Commission completed its inquiry into the unauthorized listing attempt and issued a formal notation in connection with the incident. Leon Bassett cooperated fully. He had done nothing wrong, and the notation reflects that.
The commission’s letter arrived at the firm on a Wednesday, and Gerald brought it to me personally, which he did not need to do but did anyway.
I put it in the Reference folder.
My mother did not respond to the cease-and-desist letter with any written correspondence. She called once, two weeks after I last spoke to her, and left a voicemail that I listened to this time.
It was three minutes and forty seconds long.
She said she wanted me to know that she had only ever tried to do right by her family. She said she did not understand why things had to be this way. She said she hoped I would think about what I was doing to all of us.
I listened to it twice.
Then I filed it in the same folder and did not call back.
She has not called since.
My father brought tomatoes in September.
He rang the doorbell on a Saturday afternoon and left a paper bag on the porch and was back in his car before I reached the door.
I watched him pull away from the window.
Then I brought the tomatoes inside.
They were good tomatoes.
Roma, I think. Dense and deep red. The kind that hold their shape when you cut them.
I used them over the following week and a half.
I thought about him every time.
Brianna texts me sometimes.
Brief things.
A photograph of something she passed on her way to work. A question about a recipe we both grew up eating. An occasional how are you, to which I respond with fine.
Which is accurate.
And she responds with good.
And that is generally where it ends.
She is still driving the Camry with a cracked rear window. I know this because she mentioned it once, without complaint, just as information.
I did not comment on it.
She has not asked for anything.
I have noticed this.
I do not know yet what to make of it.
One afternoon in October, a year to the day after I filed the lien, I sat at the kitchen table with a notepad and wrote a list that had nothing to do with documents or instruments or recorded facts.
The front door needed repainting.
The third porch step still had that soft spot.
The back fence had a section that had begun to lean in a way I had been meaning to address since the spring.
I had thought, for a while, about planting something along the south side of the yard. Lavender, maybe. Or salvia. Something that came back on its own without requiring a great deal of attention.
I had been putting these things off in the way you put off things that are yours and only yours and will still be there when you get to them.
There had always been something more pressing.
Forms to file. Documents to track. Instruments to record. Incidents to catalog.
The house had been the thing I was protecting.
I was not sure I had ever simply let myself live in it.
I wrote down the items on the list.
I added a fourth one.
Repaint the window frames on the east side, which had been peeling for longer than I could excuse.
Then I added a fifth.
Have someone look at the water pressure in the upstairs bathroom, which had been inconsistent since July.
The list had seven items by the time I set the pen down.
I read it over.
It was not a legal document.
It was not evidence of anything.
It did not need to be filed or confirmed or tracked by a reference number.
It was a list of things I was going to do to my house, because it was my house, and I had decided to do them.
I folded it and put it in my pocket.
Staple jumped onto the table and walked across the notepad with the particular confidence of an animal who has never once doubted his right to be wherever he is.
I watched him complete his crossing of the table, step off the far edge, and disappear behind the fruit bowl with great purpose.
I did not move him.
I had long since stopped trying to move him from places he had decided to occupy.
I thought about the afternoon the sedation wore off enough for me to hear.
I thought about my mother’s voice.
Very low.
