My mother grabbed the doorframe.
“I gave birth to you.”
I watched her through the camera. Her hair was perfectly curled. Her lipstick had bled slightly at one corner. Her suitcase had fallen over beside her.
“And I bought this house,” I said.
The deputy arrived at 12:13.
Her
name was Deputy Harlan, a woman in her fifties with gray threaded through her dark hair and the patient expression of someone who had handled too many family disputes to be impressed by volume.
She spoke to the men in the SUV first.
Whatever they told her did not take long. Within five minutes, they got in their car and left without looking at anyone.
Then she walked up to the porch.
I unlocked the door, stepped outside, and closed it behind me.
I did not invite my parents in.
Deputy Harlan looked at me.
“Ma’am, are you the owner of this property?”
