“Mr. Brandvold,” she said finally, “I was told your father was moving to an apartment at the end of October. That he knew and he was fine with it. Your brother has the title. I checked the title. It’s all in his name.”
“My father found out from your sign,” I said. “This morning. A neighbor told him.”
She was quiet again. Then she said, “I’m sorry. I mean that. I’ve got a mother in Hemingford, and I’d have come apart.” She cleared her throat.
“But the listing is signed. The price is $189,000. I have two showings set for Saturday.”
Two showings for Saturday. It was Tuesday. A small yellow house on a good street in Alliance, priced right, with new shingles Dad and I put on four summers ago. It was not going to sit.
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I thanked her and hung up and called my brother. He picked up at the shop. I could hear the vinyl cutter running behind him.
“Dad saw the sign,” I said.
“I was going to tell him this week,” Wyatt said. “I didn’t think they’d get it in so early.” He let out a breath. “Emmett, before you start in on me, just listen.”
So I listened. He had put twenty thousand dollars down in August on a lake lot out at McConaughy, a lot he’d wanted since we were kids fishing there with Dad.
The rest was due at the end of October or he lost the twenty.
“The shop’s been slow two years,” he said. “And Dad’s going to have to go to an apartment sooner or later. Those stairs. You know it and I know it. I found him a nice one by the hospital. First floor. I’m not putting him on the street.”
“You didn’t ask him,” I said.
“I was going to,” he said again, and I knew from his voice he had been telling himself that for a month.
There was a lot I wanted to say to him. About Mom’s chair. About the homestead exemption.
About what kind of man puts a sign in his own father’s yard before he says one word to his face.
But I stood in Dad’s kitchen with the phone against my ear and looked at Dad sitting at the table, both hands around his coffee cup, and I did the arithmetic the way I do on a grade.
If I fought with Wyatt, it would take days. If Dad went to a lawyer to undo the deed, it would take months, and Dad would never in his life take his own boy to court. I knew that as sure as I knew my name.
And while we fought, a nice couple from Scottsbluff would walk through on Saturday and write an offer. Then it wouldn’t be Wyatt’s house or Dad’s house.
It would be a stranger’s, and Dad would be in a first-floor apartment by the hospital, looking at a parking lot.
So I didn’t say any of the things I wanted to say. I said, “All right, Wyatt,” and hung up.
Dad looked up at me. “Is he selling it?”
“He listed it,” I said. “That’s not the same as sold.”