I asked Lauren to sit down.<\/p>\n
We went into the living room, and I took the chair near the window.<\/p>\n
She sat opposite me with her handbag on her lap.<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.<\/p>\n
Then she said she was tired of the way things had been between us.<\/p>\n
I told her I was tired, too.<\/p>\n
She said every visit seemed to end in an argument.<\/p>\n
I reminded her that I hadn't been the one bringing up the property every time.<\/p>\n
She looked away.<\/p>\n
"I know you don't see it that way."<\/p>\n
"Then tell me how you see it."<\/p>\n
She adjusted the strap of her handbag.<\/p>\n
She said she was trying to prevent problems before they happened.<\/p>\n
I asked what problems.<\/p>\n
She said she couldn't explain everything in a way I would accept.<\/p>\n
I felt the familiar frustration rise inside me.<\/p>\n
"You keep saying that, Lauren."<\/p>\n
"Because it's true."<\/p>\n
"How can I understand something you refuse to explain?"<\/p>\n
She didn't answer.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
The clock ticked above the doorway.<\/p>\n
Finally, she said that she wanted me to let her take responsibility for the house.<\/p>\n
I shook my head.<\/p>\n
"We've already settled that."<\/p>\n
"No, we haven't."<\/p>\n
"I've told you my answer."<\/p>\n
"And I've told you why I disagree."<\/p>\n
I leaned forward.<\/p>\n
"Disagreeing with me doesn't give you the right to make the decision for me."<\/p>\n
She looked at me sharply.<\/p>\n
"I never said it did."<\/p>\n
"Then stop asking me to hand it over."<\/p>\n
She stood and walked toward the window.<\/p>\n
I watched her look out at the yard.<\/p>\n
For a moment, she seemed to be considering something.<\/p>\n
Then she turned back.<\/p>\n
"You don't understand what happens when someone refuses to plan ahead."<\/p>\n
"I have planned ahead."<\/p>\n
"You think a few papers solve everything?"<\/p>\n
I felt my anger rise.<\/p>\n
Those papers represented years of work.<\/p>\n
They represented contracts I had honored, money I had earned, and property I had purchased.<\/p>\n
They were not magic.<\/p>\n
But they mattered.<\/p>\n
"They establish what I own," I said. "And I'm not giving them up."<\/p>\n
She stared at me.<\/p>\n
"I didn't ask you to give them up."<\/p>\n
"You keep asking to see them. You keep asking to take over the property. What am I supposed to think?"<\/p>\n
She opened her mouth, then closed it again.<\/p>\n
I waited for an answer.<\/p>\n
None came.<\/p>\n
She picked up her handbag.<\/p>\n
I thought she was leaving.<\/p>\n
Instead, she walked toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
"Where are you going?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"I need a moment."<\/p>\n
"You can have a moment here."<\/p>\n
She continued walking.<\/p>\n
I stood and followed her.<\/p>\n
She stopped near the office.<\/p>\n
I felt an immediate tightening in my chest.<\/p>\n
"Lauren, don't go in there."<\/p>\n
She turned toward me.<\/p>\n
"Why?"<\/p>\n
"Because I don't want you going through my records."<\/p>\n
"I'm not going through anything."<\/p>\n
"Then stay out of the office."<\/p>\n
She looked at me for a long moment.<\/p>\n
I could see the anger in her face.<\/p>\n
Then she stepped away from the doorway.<\/p>\n
"Fine."<\/p>\n
I stood still until she returned to the living room.<\/p>\n
She put her handbag on the chair.<\/p>\n
For several minutes, she said nothing.<\/p>\n
Then she asked whether I had ever considered that I might be wrong about her intentions.<\/p>\n
I told her I was willing to consider that.<\/p>\n
I also told her that she had to give me a reason to trust her decisions.<\/p>\n
She said she was my daughter.<\/p>\n
I answered that I knew exactly who she was.<\/p>\n
That was why the situation hurt so much.<\/p>\n
She looked down.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether she understood what I meant.<\/p>\n
I wanted to tell her that I wasn't trying to punish her.<\/p>\n
I wanted to explain that keeping the house wasn't a rejection of her.<\/p>\n
But I had explained those things before.<\/p>\n
I was beginning to believe that she heard only the part of my answer she disliked.<\/p>\n
After a while, she picked up her handbag again.<\/p>\n
"I'm leaving."<\/p>\n
I didn't stop her.<\/p>\n
We walked toward the front door.<\/p>\n
She opened it and stepped outside.<\/p>\n
Then she turned back.<\/p>\n
"You've made your choice."<\/p>\n
"Yes," I said.<\/p>\n
She looked at me for a moment.<\/p>\n
Then she walked away.<\/p>\n
I closed the door and leaned against it.<\/p>\n
I felt exhausted.<\/p>\n
The argument had not been especially loud.<\/p>\n
No one had shouted.<\/p>\n
Nothing had been thrown or broken.<\/p>\n
Yet I felt as though I had spent hours defending myself.<\/p>\n
I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water.<\/p>\n
I drank it standing beside the sink.<\/p>\n
Then I returned to the office.<\/p>\n
I wanted to check the documents.<\/p>\n
I stopped myself.<\/p>\n
I had checked them the previous day.<\/p>\n
There was no reason to keep doing it.<\/p>\n
Instead, I sat at my desk and reviewed the work I had left unfinished.<\/p>\n
For nearly an hour, I managed to concentrate.<\/p>\n
Then I heard a sound from outside.<\/p>\n
A car door closing.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the window.<\/p>\n
I couldn't see who was outside.<\/p>\n
I waited.<\/p>\n
A few moments later, I heard footsteps near the entrance.<\/p>\n
Then came a knock.<\/p>\n
I frowned.<\/p>\n
I wasn't expecting anyone.<\/p>\n
I went to the door and looked through the window beside it.<\/p>\n
Lauren was standing outside.<\/p>\n
I opened the door.<\/p>\n
She looked different from the way she had looked when she left.<\/p>\n
Her expression was calmer.<\/p>\n
She said she had forgotten something.<\/p>\n
I asked what it was.<\/p>\n
"My bag."<\/p>\n
I stepped aside.<\/p>\n
She came inside and walked toward the living room.<\/p>\n
Her handbag was on the chair.<\/p>\n
She picked it up.<\/p>\n
I expected her to leave immediately.<\/p>\n
Instead, she looked toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
"Can I use the bathroom before I go?"<\/p>\n
I hesitated.<\/p>\n
It was a strange thing to hesitate over.<\/p>\n
She had grown up in the house.<\/p>\n
She had used that bathroom thousands of times.<\/p>\n
I told myself I was being unreasonable.<\/p>\n
"Of course."<\/p>\n
She walked down the hallway.<\/p>\n
I returned to the living room and waited.<\/p>\n
I heard a door close.<\/p>\n
Then silence.<\/p>\n
I looked at the clock.<\/p>\n
A minute passed.<\/p>\n
Then another.<\/p>\n
I called her name.<\/p>\n
"I'm here," she replied.<\/p>\n
Her voice came from farther down the hallway than I expected.<\/p>\n
I stood up.<\/p>\n
I had a sudden, uncomfortable feeling that something wasn't right.<\/p>\n
I walked toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
Before I reached the end, I heard another door move.<\/p>\n
Then I heard Lauren's footsteps.<\/p>\n
She appeared at the corner and looked at me.<\/p>\n
"Everything all right?" I asked.<\/p>\n
"Yes."<\/p>\n
She held her handbag against her side.<\/p>\n
I looked at her, trying to understand why I felt so uneasy.<\/p>\n
She gave me a brief smile.<\/p>\n
"I should go now."<\/p>\n
I walked her to the front door.<\/p>\n
She stepped outside and turned back.<\/p>\n
"Take care of yourself, Dad."<\/p>\n
I told her I would.<\/p>\n
She left.<\/p>\n
I closed the door and locked it.<\/p>\n
For several seconds, I stood in the hallway.<\/p>\n
I couldn't explain what had bothered me.<\/p>\n
I had no proof she had done anything.<\/p>\n
She had collected her bag, used the bathroom, and left.<\/p>\n
That was all.<\/p>\n
I went into the office and sat down.<\/p>\n
I tried to return to my work.<\/p>\n
But I kept remembering the way she had looked toward the hallway.<\/p>\n
I kept remembering how long she had been away from the living room.<\/p>\n
I didn't want suspicion to become the only way I saw my daughter.<\/p>\n
Still, I knew I could no longer dismiss my discomfort simply because I couldn't prove its cause.<\/p>\n
I decided to check the house before going to bed.<\/p>\n
I walked through the rooms.<\/p>\n
I checked the windows and the doors.<\/p>\n
Everything seemed normal.<\/p>\n
I went to the forgotten room and examined the lock.<\/p>\n
It was closed.<\/p>\n
I used the black key to open it.<\/p>\n
The documents were there.<\/p>\n
The property papers were safe.<\/p>\n
I closed the door and locked it again.<\/p>\n
Then I returned to the hallway.<\/p>\n
I told myself I had done enough.<\/p>\n
I couldn't spend my life checking every room after every visit.<\/p>\n
I turned off the lights and went to bed.<\/p>\n
That night, I slept poorly.<\/p>\n
I woke several times and listened to the house.<\/p>\n
Each time, everything was quiet.<\/p>\n
By morning, I was tired and irritable.<\/p>\n
I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe the uneasiness would pass.<\/p>\n
I wanted to believe that the next visit would be ordinary.<\/p>\n
I had no idea that I was running out of time to keep believing that.<\/p>\n
I asked Lauren to sit down. We went into the living room, and I took the chair near the window. She sat opposite me with her handbag on her lap. … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36949,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36929\/revisions\/36949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}