Chapter 5 - The Line in the Mud
The dining room went dead silent. The only sound was the rhythmic ticking of the antique grandfather clock in the corner and the muffled squeak of Cole's sneakers upstairs.
Mom stared at the open spiral notebook as if it were a coiled copperhead snake. Her lips pressed into a thin, white line. "You did those repairs for yourselves," she managed to sputter, though the certainty had leaked out of her voice. "You lived here rent-free for twenty years! You owed maintenance!"
"Rent-free?" Dale chuckled, a dry, humorless sound that made Uncle Ray look away in embarrassment. "Evelyn, the mortgage payment on a turnkey house in town in 2006 would have been four hundred dollars a month. We spent the equivalent of that every single month just keeping the plaster from collapsing on Hannah’s crib. We didn't live here for free. We bought this house from the foundation up, one structural beam at a time."
"Besides," I added, stepping closer until I was standing inches from my mother, "you never asked Jeff to pay you back for the six thousand dollars you spent bailing out his truck lease in 2018. You never asked him to reimburse you for the trailer rent he defaulted on. You’ve subsidized him his entire adult life while Dale and I paid our own way. And I never begrudged him that. Not once. But you will not take the roof over my daughter's head to clean up his mistakes."
Dad closed the notebook with a muffled thud. He looked tired. The bluster had completely drained from his frame, leaving behind an old man whose knees hurt from the cold.
"Evelyn," Dad said quietly, pulling his hand away from the receipts. "She’s right."
Mom spun on him, horrified. "Arthur! What did you say?"
"I said she’s right," Dad repeated, his voice surprisingly firm. "When we moved into the condo in town, the building inspector told me the south sill plate on this barn was rotted through. He said if someone didn't jack up the frame and pour new footings within three years, the kitchen would buckle into the cellar. I knew that. I gave it to Tammy because I couldn't afford to tear it down and I couldn't afford the property taxes on an empty lot. Dale rebuilt the sill plate with his own hands. I remember seeing him under the crawlspace with a hydraulic jack in November."
"Arthur, you shut your mouth!" Mom shrieked, her control slipping entirely.
"No, Evelyn, I won't," Dad said. He turned to Uncle Ray. "Ray, did you know about the sill plate?"
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Ray cleared his throat, suddenly finding the wallpaper pattern immensely fascinating. "Well... Art, you did mention back in '05 that the county gave you a citation for the electrical meter..."
"Exactly," Dad said. "Tammy took a wreck and made it a home. We don't have sixty thousand dollars sitting around to buy her out, and even if we did, kicking Dale and Tammy out into the street to give Jeff a house isn't Christian. It's just cruel."
