He read the notice twice before the meaning finally reached him. I watched over the rim of my coffee cup as his eyes moved across the words: sixty days to vacate. A&E Property Holdings was ending the month-to-month lease and putting the house on the market. Then he reached the second page, the letter written in my own hand, and recognition slowly replaced confusion. A&E. Adelaide and Edmund. His father’s old company. His mother’s name.

Callum had spent eight months complaining about his landlord without ever realizing he was complaining about me. Brielle came downstairs and asked what was happening, but Callum couldn’t answer. The woman he had placed in a small studio apartment to free up a bedroom had actually owned the ground beneath his family for nearly a year. I finished my coffee calmly. I told him the grandchildren’s education was already protected in trusts he could never touch. Then the taxi arrived.