The Villa My Father Gave Away

First, nobody was going to be put on the street. Mindy and Terry had a duplex on Pike Street where the lease, I would find out later, ran through the end of the month, and I was not going to be responsible for two little boys sleeping in a car because their grandfather could not keep his hands to himself. Jodi had a rental on Birch Lane, a three-bedroom with a fenced yard, empty since August. At seven the next morning I sent my sister a message that I had written and rewritten four times.

Mindy, my agent has a three-bedroom house for you on Birch Lane, available today. I will pay the first three months. Call Jodi and you can move in tonight. The villa is not available. I am not angry at the boys. Please do not let Dad make this about them.

She read it. I could see it said delivered, and then read. It was forty minutes before the three dots appeared, and what she sent back was one line.

Dad says you’re bluffing.

I looked at that for a long time. Then I sent the same offer to Terry, because I thought he might be a man who actually read his messages, and I never got an answer from him at all. I learned later that my father had gotten to him first, standing in his duplex kitchen and telling him that Leah had agreed to sign the house over but was too proud to say so out loud, the Navy ones always are.

Second, they would have a chance to leave in writing.

At nine on Saturday morning Jodi walked up my front steps with her office assistant as a witness, and she handed my father a notice. It was typed on her company letterhead. It stated that the owner, Commander Leah Osgood, United States Navy, had never granted anyone the right to occupy the property at that address, that the spare key held by Rex Osgood had been given for emergencies only, that all permission to enter or remain was withdrawn as of that moment, and that every person inside was required to vacate by five o’clock on the following Friday. A second copy went by certified mail, return receipt requested, and Colleen signed the green card at the door with a pen from her cardigan pocket. She did not read it. I know because Jodi told me she did not even turn the page over.

My father tore the first copy in half and handed the pieces back to Jodi’s assistant.

“Tell Leah this is a family matter,” he said.

Jodi told him that she would be happy to pass that along, and she wrote down the time. She has an excellent hand.

Third, I called Sheriff Sid.

Sid and Perry were boys together, played ball together at Greeley Falls Consolidated, and Sid had carried the front left corner of Perry’s casket. He was sheriff now, fifty-three, a broad, tired man who takes off his hat when he wants a person to hear him. I sat across from him in his office on Sunday afternoon and told him everything, and he listened with his hands folded over his belt buckle.

“I could move them tonight, technically,” he said. “No lease, no rent, a spare key somebody gave them for emergencies, and the owner has put it in writing. So why wait?”

I told him the truth. I wanted my father to have until Friday at five to take his family out of my house with nobody ever having to know. If he did, I would change the locks and say not one word.

“And if he doesn’t?”