I turned back to Mara and Mark.
“This property belongs to me now,” I announced, and let the silence do the rest.
They stood there while that settled.
Mara’s hands were shaking. Mark was very quiet. He looked at me as if he wanted to say something, an explanation, maybe. But there wasn’t anything left that I needed to hear.
I told them how it had happened. Not everything, but just the outline: the sketches on the kitchen table. The patent. The contract. The company. And the quiet, unglamorous accumulation of work that I had been doing while they were building something else entirely.
There wasn’t anything left that I needed to hear.
“You bought this house?” Mara asked.
“My company identified it as suitable for a project. I didn’t know who it belonged to until I saw the document.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes moved to my leg. Then she asked the question I anticipated.
“I made a mistake, Arnie. I was wrong. Our daughters… Can I see them? Just once?”
I looked at Mara without raising my voice.
“They stopped waiting for you a long time ago. I made sure they didn’t have to.”
“You bought this house?”
Silence settled. Behind us, the movers kept working, the sound of boxes and footsteps filling the space.
Then Mark finally spoke.
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this, man. Things just… didn’t work out. I made some bad calls, alright? I thought I had it handled.”
Mara turned on him with the kind of exhausted fury that accumulates when two people have been blaming each other for long enough.
“Don’t start. You promised me this would work,” she snapped at him. “You said you had it all figured out. Look at us now.”
“I made some bad calls, alright?”
I had nothing more to say to either of them.
“There’s nothing left here. For any of us.”
“Arnold, wait…please,” Mara called after me as I turned to leave. “You can’t do this. This is our home.”
Mark stepped forward, desperation brimming in his eyes. “We’ll figure something out, alright? Just… just give us time, man. Don’t throw us out like this.”
I didn’t answer. I got into the truck and closed the door.
“Don’t throw us out like this.”
For a moment, I just sat there. Then I picked up my phone and called the lead mover.
“I need the keys by five.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Understood, Sir.”
I hung up.
Outside, Mara had gone quiet. Mark didn’t say anything else.
I started the engine and drove away.
When I got home, the girls were at the table with my mother, their heads bent close together as they colored, crayons scattered across the surface and laughter slipping out in small bursts.
Outside, Mara had gone quiet.
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