Chapter 8 - The Night Grant Kicked Me Out
The night after the funeral had confused me until the records office.
Then I understood it completely.
We came home around five.
I went straight upstairs.
Ethan’s bedroom door was closed.
I opened it.
Grant appeared behind me almost immediately.
“Don’t.”
I turned.
“Don’t what?”
“Go in there.”
“Why?”
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”
I looked at our son’s bed.
His books.
The small wooden sailboat on his shelf.
“I want to sit in his room.”
Grant became unusually sharp.
“No.”
I stared at him.
He softened quickly.
“The detector team still hasn’t cleared everything. It might not be safe.”
That was a lie.
The carbon monoxide source was inactive.
The room had been ventilated for days.
I did not know that then.
I walked in anyway.
Grant followed.
I noticed a thin crack in the drywall near the heater enclosure.
“Was that always there?”
Grant said yes too quickly.
I crouched to look.
He took my arm.
“Audrey, stop.”
“Let go.”
He released me.
Then I asked:
“Did the inspector open this wall?”
Grant’s face changed.
That was the first moment.
I did not understand it then.
But he realized I was asking exactly the question he could not answer.
We argued.
I accused him of hiding something.
He accused me of being hysterical from grief.
Then he told me to leave the house for the night.
When I refused, he said:
“You can’t stay here like this.”
I screamed that it was my house.
He answered:
“Then act like someone capable of living in it.”
That sentence was so cruel I stopped fighting.
I packed one bag.
Went to my sister’s.
Six hours later, he filed to demolish the room.
May you like
He had not thrown me out because my grief frightened him.
He needed the property empty long enough to alter the evidence.
