Chapter 7 : The first call came at 7:04 in the morning.
Odessa was in the kitchen making coffee. She looked at the caller ID — Bianca Ashford — and she did not answer it, because she had one full day of not answering planned, and one full day was the plan, because Marisol had told her that one full day of silence would do more than a month of explanation, and Odessa trusted Marisol.
The second call came at 7:11. Julian.
The third call came at 7:14. Bianca.
At 7:22, Julian left a voicemail, and Odessa played it in the kitchen with her coffee in her hand.
"Call my mother back," was all it said. His voice was very flat. She had never heard him sound like that. Not angry, not loud. Flat the way a road is flat when it's about to curve.
She did not call back.
The fourth call came at 7:38. A number she did not recognize, a local landline, three-digit prefix Odessa did not have in her phone. She let it ring out. She looked up the prefix while the coffee cooled. It was the prefix of the county clerk's office, not that it mattered.
At 8:00 she went to work. At 8:38, she got a text from Julian.
Did you know.
She looked at it for a moment, and then she set the phone face down on her desk, and then she went to her 9:00 meeting, and then she came back to her desk at 10:15 and looked at it again.
Did you know.
She did not answer.
At 11:40, another text from Julian.
Answer me.
At 12:03, a text from Bianca.
Odessa.
That was it. Odessa. A period. The period had a lot in it.
At 12:30, at her desk, with her lunch half-eaten in front of her, Odessa typed.
What's going on.
She sent it. She had rehearsed the sequence with Marisol, who had said: do not appear not to know. Do not appear to know too much. Do not appear to know anything. Say What's going on. You are a wife, not a defendant.
Julian's reply came in under a minute.
My mother says the apartment's been sold.
Odessa typed.
Sold to who.
Julian typed.
Nobody knows. The name on the deed is a trust. The county website says it was recorded Wednesday morning. Nine o'clock.
Odessa typed.
That was before Thanksgiving.
Julian typed.
Yes.
Odessa typed.
Did Bianca sell it.
Julian typed.
She says no.
Odessa typed.
Then somebody signed something.
Julian typed.
Somebody signed something.
Odessa looked at the last message for a long time.
Then she typed the shortest message she would send in the whole eight weeks.
Let me know what you find out.
She sent it and set the phone face down and finished her sandwich.
At 2:15, Marisol sent her a one-line email.
County record is public. Their attorney will have the trust name by Friday.
Friday. Two days.
At 6:10, Julian called again, and this time Odessa answered.
"Where are you," he said.
"Driving home."
"Come to the villa."
"Why."
"Because my mother needs to speak to you."
"About what."
"About the apartment."
"I don't know anything about the apartment, Julian."
There was a pause on his end. She could hear him hearing that sentence and having to decide what it meant.
"I didn't say you did," he said, slowly. "I said come to the villa."
"I'm coming."
She turned the car around at the next light and drove the fifteen minutes up the harbor road to the villa. She parked in the driveway between the two black SUVs and she walked in through the front door without knocking because she never knocked, and she crossed the marble foyer — the same marble, eyes-forward — and entered the great room with her coat folded over her arm.
Bianca was standing at the window with her back to the room. No tea. No shawl. Burgundy dress, brown coat over her shoulders like it was still cold inside. Julian stood at the fireplace with his arms crossed. Both of them turned when Odessa's heels hit the marble, and she saw Bianca's face, and Bianca's face was open in a way Odessa had never seen.
Someone had cut to the bone.
"Odessa," Bianca said. Her voice was thin. "Sit down."
"I'll stand," Odessa said. "I have a coat in my hands."
Bianca looked at the coat. She looked at the tote on Odessa's arm.
"This is important," Bianca said.
"Then say it," Odessa said.
Bianca drew one breath and looked at her son and looked back at Odessa and said the sentence she had clearly been rehearsing for six hours, in the flat, ruined voice of a woman who has just discovered that a wall she was leaning on is not, in fact, a wall.
"Someone bought my apartment out from under me."
Odessa stood very still.
"When," she said.
"Wednesday. The deed recorded Wednesday morning. Nine o'clock."
"Somebody who had a right to buy it," Odessa said.
"Somebody with the trust paperwork," Bianca said. "Somebody who paid off the entire loan in a single transfer. Somebody who knew exactly what to file. My lawyer says they've been preparing for months, maybe a year. He says they did everything by the book. He says—" She stopped. She pressed her lips together. Then, with visible effort, she finished the sentence. "He says there is nothing I can do."
Julian said, from the fireplace, "We're going to find out who it is."
Odessa looked at him.
"How," she said.
"Our attorney. The trust is going to name the buyer. Six to eight weeks. Maybe sooner."
Odessa looked at Bianca. Bianca was watching her, watching her with a new expression, one that Odessa had never been on the receiving end of and that took her a moment to recognize, because it looked so different on that face — it was the expression of a woman who has just realized that the woman she has been treating like a stack of paperwork is actually, in some way she cannot yet name, in the room.
Julian said, "You don't have anything to say."
Odessa thought about what Marisol had told her. Do not appear not to know. Do not appear to know too much.
She let a beat go by, then said, calmly, "I'm sorry, Bianca."
Bianca's chin came up a fraction.
"You're sorry," she said.
"It was a beautiful apartment."
Bianca did not answer.
Julian said, "That's it."
Odessa adjusted the coat on her arm and looked at her husband and then at her mother-in-law and then at the marble, with its faint grey veining, with the whole history of that afternoon in late October completely sopped up and polished away.
"That's it," she said. "Call me if you find out who bought it. I'd like to know too."
She turned and walked out.
In the driveway, with her hand on the car door, she stopped and looked back at the villa one last time. Bianca was at the window — the same window, on the ground floor, the window they all stood at when they wanted to look at the water or at the driveway — and she was watching Odessa.
Odessa raised one hand.
Bianca did not raise hers.
Odessa got in the car and drove home and did not turn on the radio, and in the streetlights at the corner of Calloway and Fourth she finally let her hands start to shake, hard, both of them, on the wheel, first slow then fast, and she pulled into her parking space and cut the engine and sat there with her hands in her lap for three full minutes before she was steady enough to get out of the car.
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All 8 chapters
- 1The silence came too fast.
- 2The lawyer's name was Marisol Vega, and she had a voice that did not enjoy delivering good news in increments.
- 3The knock came at 9:20.
- 4She took a cab home because her hands were unreliable and she did not want to be in a car by herself on the harbor road with the water on one side and the lights on the other. The cab driver had a small brass Buddha on the dash and a pack
- 5The deed recorded at 9:00 a.m. on a Wednesday.
- 6Thanksgiving at the villa was set for one o'clock, and Odessa arrived at 12:48 in the ivory crepe dress — the same dress, because that was its own statement and she had decided to make it — with a green bean casserole she had not made her
- 7The first call came at 7:04 in the morning.
- 8The eight weeks passed like weather.