Chapter 64
THEN
“Mabel? Is that you?”
When I got home from school, I found Cess and Ness at the kitchen table, which, rather than being covered in food, was covered in manila folders and stacks of paperwork. They both had a glass of whiskey.
As I entered, Ness reached for the seat beside her and pulled it out.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We’ve had a letter from your father’s lawyer.”
Neither Cess nor Ness were looking at me, which was unusual. “A letter about what?”
“What do you think? About his pride and joy.” Cess lifted her hand and gestured around. “Rosehill. His lawyer is making a claim that he should be entitled to this place. Don’t worry, Mabel, we expected this.”
“But he isn’t entitled to it,” I said nervously. “Is he?”
“No,” she said. But not with as much conviction as I’d have liked.
“Does your lawyer think Dad is entitled to the house?”
Cess let out a long exhale. “He thinks your father could make a case that he is. The law is a slippery thing; he can argue that he’s entitled to anything. It will be up to the judge to decide if his case has merit.”
“What kind of case can he make?”
“From the sounds of it, his case will be based on a few things, but the long and short is that he’ll argue that he needs the house more than I do.”
“He needs it? For what? Parties?”
Neither of them responded.
“What?” I asked.
Cess and Ness exchanged a look. “In not entirely unrelated news, we heard today that your father is getting married. To Susan. And he’s arguing that he needs the house to raise his family.”
“Family? What family?”
“Well.” Ness dropped her gaze. “Susan has a young daughter, Amelia.”
I hated the sting that this information brought. I found myself thinking of the pretty little girl I saw with him at Mass. “So he can argue that he needs the house so he can raise his new family?”
Cess looked me straight in the eye. “The strongest argument he has for claiming the house is that, along with his new wife and stepdaughter, he’d be raising you, the heir to the house, inside it.”