I did not knock harder. I did not scream in the rain. I called a locksmith — not to get inside, but to document what had happened. He examined the front door and wrote me a service note: LOCK CYLINDER APPEARS RECENTLY REPLACED. CLIENT KEY DOES NOT OPERATE FRONT ENTRY. A boring piece of paper. A very useful piece of paper.
That night I checked into a roadside motel with the contractor bags and my sketchbooks, pulled up the deed on my laptop — two names, Emily Bradley and Gregory Bradley, joint ownership — and our marital agreement, which documented that the down payment had come from a separate family distribution. Greg’s texts arrived at 10:42 p.m.: “I think this is best. Please don’t make a scene.” I saved them as PDFs.