Chapter 2 - The Paper Trail of Betrayal
The living room went quiet in the way only rooms full of upper-middle-class people from Boulder and Denver can go quiet—a sudden, polite vacuum where nobody wants to hear the glass break, but everyone is leaning in to watch the shards fly.
Aunt Carol dropped a cracker. It sounded like a gunshot.
"Becca," my mother whispered, her face draining of what little winter color it had. "Don't be dramatic. Let's go into the back room."
"No," I said, sliding my backpack off my shoulder and letting it thud onto the flea-market rug. I reached into the front pocket, my fingers finding the heavy, clear plastic sleeve I always keep with me when traveling through mountain passes. Inside was the certified copy of the warranty deed, stamped and sealed by the Hinsdale County Clerk on October 14, three years ago. "We can talk right here. In the house I bought. With the money I earned. While you're all drinking my cider."
Jason shifted his weight, his polo shirt stretching across a chest that looked like it spent more time at the Denver Country Club than swinging a framing hammer. "Look, Rebecca—right? Becca? Olivia said you guys had an arrangement. A family transfer thing. She mentioned something about taxes..."
I looked past him to my sister. Olivia’s smooth, high-end skincare routine couldn't hide the tiny tic starting beneath her left eye.
"An arrangement?" I asked, stepping fully across the threshold and kicking the door shut behind me, the heavy wood latching with a satisfying, airtight click. "Olivia, tell me about our arrangement. Did we discuss it over brunch, or was it during one of those telepathic sessions you have with yourself while lying on a designer sectional?"
"Becca, you're being impossible," Olivia hissed, dropping the breathy host persona. For a second, the mask slipped, revealing the spoiled sixteen-year-old who used to scream at Mom until she bought her the car with the sunroof. "You live in a shoe box in Capitol Hill. You don't even come up here more than three times a winter! Jason and I have two children. We need a place with space. Mom agreed that keeping it in the family means keeping it practical, and since you’re single and obsessed with your work—"
"Stop right there," I said.
I didn't yell. I didn't need to. I walked over to the kitchen island—the one I had tiled with gray slate during a week of vacation where I missed my best friend's wedding—and set the plastic sleeve down on the counter with a crisp slap.
"Mom," I said, turning my gaze to the woman who had raised us on army rations and emotional guilt trips. "Did you sign something giving Olivia authority over my property?"
Diane Hart looked down at her wine glass, her knuckles white. "She said she was organizing your estate planning, Becca. She said since you travel for insurance claims, if anything ever happened to you—God forbid—you’d want the family to have immediate access without probate delays. She’s my daughter too."
"She is," I agreed, my chest tightening into a hard, cold knot of fury. "And I am your daughter too. The one who spent every weekend for three years hauling drywall up a mountain pass while Olivia was posting pictures of her Greek island vacations. The one who paid $189,000 plus back taxes plus five thousand dollars in structural engineering fees to keep this roof from caving in on your head when you come up for Thanksgiving."
The guests were staring at the floor now. Sourdough Sarah looked like she wanted to crawl into the soapstone fireplace.
"Well," Jason said, clearing his throat and trying to pull his executive-presence face back into place. "Regardless of the emotional history, the locks have been changed, and our names are on the guest registry at the HOA office down in Lake City. Legally speaking, you're trespassing, Rebecca. So maybe you should head back down those switchbacks before dark."
I looked at him. Really looked at him. The man who married my sister and thought he could inherit a mountain chalet by reciting corporate buzzwords.
"The HOA office in Lake City," I repeated slowly. "You mean the one managed by old man Henderson, who sold me this place directly because his knees are too bad to walk the property lines? The one where I am the registered voting member on the water rights?"
May you like
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my heavy brass keyring—the one with twenty keys, including the old deadbolt, the shed lock, the generator panel, and the master gate. I held them up and let them jingle.
"Call Henderson," I said to Jason. "Go ahead. Use your cell phone. Tell him that Olivia Hart sold you a house she doesn't own. Let's see how fast the Hinsdale County Sheriff's deputies make it up those switchbacks with chains on their tires."
