“So — what do you want?”
I had my list ready. I always do. First: a demand letter to Jordan and Melanie Styles and to Styles Hospitality LLC — repay the $11,940 they collected from renting our house, plus the $742 in extra utilities we paid. $12,682 total, within 30 days, or we sue for trespass and unjust enrichment. Second: written trespass notices for Jordan and for Lynette — neither of them to set foot on our property again without our written permission. Third: a report to Hearthay as the owners, with a copy of our deed and our IDs, asking them to take the listing down. Fourth: a police report for the forgery, filed after the walkthrough.
“You want to do this at the house?” Lou said. It wasn’t a question. “It’s where he sold it. Want me to set you up with a recorder?”
“No. I’m not recording my daughter, Lou. There will be witnesses.”
On Thursday, Jordan came to check our smoke detectors. He showed up at four on Thursday, October 22nd, with a stepladder and a 9-volt battery in his shirt pocket. “Before your trip,” he said. “Can’t have you coming home to a chirping detector?”
I let him in. Roger stayed out in the barn — because I asked him to, and because I didn’t entirely trust his hands anywhere near Jordan’s collar. Jordan did check the smoke detectors. He also took pictures of every room on his phone, quickly, the way you do when you think the other person isn’t paying attention. Then he measured the living room wall from the window to the corner. “Thinking of a sectional for you guys,” he said. “For Christmas.”
“We’ll be in Florida for Christmas,” I said. “Or so I’m told.”
He laughed a little too loud. At the door, he stopped. “Hey, Pat — while you’re gone, I should have the barn key for the snowblower. Somebody has to clear the lane.”
“No thank you.”
“It’s just for emergencies.”
“No thank you, Jordan.”
He pulled out his phone and called Melanie right there on the porch, on speaker, like a clerk calling in a supervisor. “Mom,” Melanie said, “just give him the key. Who’s going to plow while you’re gone?” “Herb’s nephew,” I said. “He’s plowed that lane for twenty years. We have a contract.”
Jordan hung up on his wife. Then he leaned in close and low, so I’d know it was just for me. “Mel says it’s going to be ours anyway. Pat — I’m just keeping it up.”
I looked at him for a long moment. I didn’t blink, and I didn’t answer. He went down the porch steps with his stepladder and his 9-volt battery and his very clear idea of who I was.
He thought I had one house. That was the first thing he had wrong.
Here’s what nobody in my family knew. In November of 2009, the same recession that cost Lynette’s crew their contract put half the duplexes in Holland’s Ferry into foreclosure. Roger and I bought one on Larch Street at a sheriff’s sale for $61,000. It had a caved-in porch and a raccoon living in the pantry. Roger rebuilt that kitchen on weekends with two of his former shop students. I wrote the lease, collected the rent, and did the books at our kitchen table after work.
Then we bought another one. And another one.
Seventeen years later, Larch Street Holdings LLC — which is Roger and me, and nobody else — owns seven rental units in Holland’s Ferry. Every one of them is leased on paper, inspected, insured, and legal. We’ve never missed a property tax payment and never been sued, and our tenants have our phone number and use it. That furnace Roger was crawling under the week of my birthday belonged to a nurse on Foundry Street.
Melanie didn’t know, because I never told her. After that night on the porch in 2021, I decided that anything I told my daughter about money, she would already be spending in her head. So I told her nothing.
One of our units is the left side of a big old duplex at 418 Foundry Street. Four bedrooms, fully furnished, rented to traveling nurses whose contract ends November 20th. Blackwater needed beds for five men on December 1st.
On Friday, October 23rd, I made three phone calls and one pot of chili.
At seven that morning, before anyone came, Roger changed our Wi-Fi back to its old name — “Myrick” — with a new password. Every gadget Jordan had put in our house went dark at once, porch camera included. At 7:40, Jordan texted: “internet down out there?” I wrote back: “Roger’s been fiddling with the router.” That was true.
My first call was to a locksmith. He came at ten and rekeyed the backup cylinders on both of Jordan’s locks, front and back, so the metal keys Jordan and Lynette carried would no longer turn. It cost $145, and he let Roger keep the old pins in a sandwich bag. Then, at my request, Roger stood at the front door with a paper clip and did the four-minute factory reset on each lock, the way the young man on the helpline had described. Each keypad blinked, went dark, and came back up as if it had never heard of Jordan Styles. I set up the new administrator account on my own phone under my own name, and I chose a new code that I didn’t tell anyone — not even Roger — until that night.
The second call was to Ranata Gould. “Please bring your counsel’s notice,” I said. “And I’ll have a lease for you to look at.”
“A lease?”
“You said you need beds on December 1st.”
There was a short silence. “I’ll bring a pen,” she said.
The third call was to Herb. “Coffee at my house tomorrow at 10:00,” I said. “Wear your good cardigan.” “What’s the occasion?” “You’ll see.”
At dusk, Roger backed our car into the barn and pulled the big door shut. From the lane, the house would look exactly like a house whose owners were fifty miles away with hot stones on their backs.
At 9:14 that night, Melanie texted me: “Spa tomorrow at 9:00. Enjoy every minute, mama. Love you.” I wrote back: “Thank you, sweetheart. Good night.” I never told her I was going. I never told her I wasn’t.
At 7:55 the next morning, Lynette’s car turned into our lane. It was Saturday, October 24th — cold and bright, frost on the pumpkins by the porch steps. I stood in the kitchen in my robe with a cup of coffee, behind the lace curtain my mother made, and watched Lynette get out of her car. Our kitchen window looks right out over the porch, and the glass is the old single-pane kind, so I heard nearly every word that morning.
She carried a cleaning caddy in one hand and three empty garment bags over her arm. Those were for my clothes, I understood later — so the closets would be clear for the walkthrough. She went up the steps and typed into the keypad without looking. 1-9-6-1. A red light. Three short beeps. She typed it again, slower. Red light. Three beeps. My birth year didn’t open my house anymore.
She dug in her purse for her key, fit it into the cylinder, and twisted. It didn’t turn. She twisted harder, and I heard her swear through two inches of oak. Then she called Jordan.
I got dressed. I did my hair. I made a second pot of coffee and set out eight mugs on the kitchen table, because I had done my counting.
At 9:35, Jordan’s pickup came up the lane too fast, with Melanie in the passenger seat. They joined Lynette on the porch, and Jordan stabbed at his phone. “It says device removed. The lock doesn’t exist — and the camera’s been offline since yesterday.” “Maybe the power’s out,” Melanie said. “I’ll call a locksmith.” “Blackwater’s here in 20 minutes.”
Then Melanie did the one thing none of them had planned for. She called me. My phone was lying on the kitchen table, eight feet from the front door. It rang out loud — the old-fashioned bell ringtone Hadley picked for me last summer. On the porch, everyone went still.
“Jordan,” Melanie said. “That’s Mom’s ringtone.”
At 9:58, a white pickup with a Blackwater logo on the door pulled in behind them. Ranata Gould was about fifty, in a quilted vest and sensible boots, with a leather folder under her arm. The man with her was built like a refrigerator and wore a Blackwater cap. She introduced him as Duke Mahavey, the crew foreman. Herb came walking across Tinker Run Road at the same moment, carrying a thermos and wearing his good brown cardigan.
Jordan recovered fast. I’ll give him that. He came down two steps with his hand out and his salesman’s smile on. “Ranata! Great to meet you in person. Sorry — little lock glitch. The owners are snowbirds. They’re already packing for Naples.”
“Totally fine. So — they won’t be joining us?” Ranata said.
“No, no — they signed everything back in September. Right at the kitchen table in there.”
Ranata opened her folder. “Mrs. Myrick signed on September 28th.” Jordan said, “Great lady, very hands off. That’s why I handle everything.”
Melanie wasn’t listening. She was staring at the front door, and Lynette had backed down to the bottom step with her garment bags clutched to her chest. Duke looked at the phone in Melanie’s hand, then at the door, then at Jordan. He didn’t say a word, but he took his cap off and held it the way men do at a funeral.