3.
I gripped the car keys until the metal teeth bit deep into my palm. It hurt. It also kept me clear.
I slipped back into my room without alerting Denys or anyone else.
Less than five minutes later, the doorbell rang.
Ding-dong—
"Mom, it's me!"
Unhurried, easy, exactly the same singsong he'd used as a kid coming home from school. "Mom, I'm back." Only now the sound landed in my ears like a dull knife dragged through flesh.
I shut my eyes. When I opened them, all that was left underneath was a frozen, dead stillness. I walked over and turned the lock.
Denys stood outside, smiling like he couldn't hurt a fly. "Mom, I left my car keys on your coffee table."
He squeezed in sideways, didn't even change his shoes, and headed straight for the living room, so at home, as if the man crouched in the stairwell half an hour ago hissing "she'll come around once I sweet-talk her" wasn't him at all.
"They're on the table." My voice was flat as dead water. I turned and went to the couch.
Sharp-eyed, he scooped up the keys, then came over and crouched in front of me, tipping his face up.
"Mom, you barely ate tonight. Want me to peel you an apple? You always used to love that."
"No."
I sat down in the middle of the couch and rested my fingers on the remote, but didn't press it. I just looked up at him. "Den."
"Yeah!" he answered brightly, shuffling his knees forward half a step, for all the world like a dog waiting to be fed.
Something twisted hard in my chest, but nothing showed on my face. "The house. I've been thinking. There has to be some kind of settlement."
His pupils shrank all at once, his shoulders visibly stiffening for half a second before he pulled his mouth back into a smile, a little too deliberate. "Mom, saying things like that just hurts. House, no house, I really don't care. All I want is for you to stop being angry and let me come home. That's worth more than anything."
I watched his eyes. No guilt in them. No ache. Only bare, hungry greed he was scrambling to hide.
"You really don't want it?" I picked up the cup of tea gone cold on the table and took a sip, as if the question were nothing. "This house was always meant to be signed over to you. You're sure? No regrets?"
His throat bobbed hard.
I saw it, plain as day.
The air went suddenly quiet. Only the old wall clock ticked, tick, tick, each beat landing like it struck a raw nerve in him.
The hand hanging at Denys's side curled into a fist, knuckles going white, then loosened.
He lifted his head, eyes reddening on cue, his voice cracking into a tremble. "Mom, why are you still testing me? I said I don't want it, so I don't! Keep the house for your old age!"
"Good, then you're not after it." I set the teacup down. The porcelain clicked against the glass tabletop with a crisp little ding.
"Since you truly don't want it, your mother can rest easy."
Right in front of him, I tapped my finger and posted the news in the family group chat: I was about to sell the house and travel abroad.
For an instant, the color drained from Denys's face.
"Mom, you're going abroad? Something this big and you didn't say a word to me?"
I smiled. "I wanted to when I was young. But I had to take care of you, so I never went."
Denys opened his mouth to say more, but his phone suddenly buzzed like mad, this time a direct call, the vibration humming through the quiet living room like a dying wasp.
His finger swiped clumsily across the screen twice and cut the call.
But right after, a message from the app popped up, and this time he couldn't hold back. He tapped it open in a hurry, his body instinctively turning away from me, and the glow of the screen played over his face, bright, then dark, then bright again.
I leaned back on the couch. The angle was perfect.
The line jumped up, every word like a needle dipped in poison. "Your aunt told me what got posted in the group."
"That old woman is dead set on not giving you the house. What are you still wasting time on her for?"
"Dig out the property deed and the household documents now, before she really lists it with an agent tomorrow!"
Denys's fingers were shaking, the tips gone cold as he jabbed blindly at the screen.
He whipped his head around to look at me, and for the first time the disguise was gone, nothing left in his eyes but shock, panic, and a thread of venom at being seen through.
"Mom, I—" He snatched the car keys off the table. As he stood his knee cracked against the corner of the coffee table with a dull thud, but he acted like he felt nothing. "Something urgent came up at work, there's a problem with the project, I have to head back!"
"Go, then." I settled against the back of the couch and even curved my mouth at him. "Be careful on the road. No need to panic."
He all but bolted for the door, hadn't even gotten his shoes on right, heel crushing down the back of one as he stumbled out. He yanked the door shut behind him with a slam that knocked the picture frame on the wall crooked.
Inside that frame was a photo from the year he turned five, me holding him at the park. In it I was young, grinning like a fool, and in my arms he clutched a caramel apple.
