Chapter 5
Over the following days, the property documents were compared with the official records held by Mr. Vance.
I learned that Rosamond had indeed received significant rights and financial assets after his death, but not the absolute, unchecked ownership she had claimed during those first brutal days after the funeral.
My protected interest in the valley house was entirely real.
The mountain cabin was also mine to use, repair, or leave alone.
Furthermore, there was money Thaddeus had explicitly designated for the cabin’s restoration, enough to make the place livable rather than the abandoned shell I had entered in the dark.
I could have insisted on returning immediately to the four-million-dollar house.
For several nights, I thought about doing just that.
I pictured walking back through the front door, putting my clothes back into the large closet, setting my coffee cup beside hers every morning, and forcing her to live with the fact that she had failed to remove me.
The fantasy satisfied me for about ten minutes.
Then I imagined actually living that way every day.
Every hallway would become a battlefield. Every closed door would remind me of my dead son. Every meal would be another silent test of who had won.
I did not want the remainder of my life organized around winning arguments with my son’s widow.
So I made a different choice.
I kept my protected legal rights intact while the property questions were formally settled, and I refused to sign away anything simply to make the conflict disappear.
But I also told Rosamond through Mr. Vance that I would not move back into the main house as long as the cabin could be made safe and livable.
She requested a meeting with me at the lawyer’s office to sign the formal separation agreement.
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“Why would you do that?” she asked across the mahogany table, looking genuinely puzzled. “You have the legal right to stay in the main residence. Why stay in the woods?”
“Because having the right to enter your house does not mean I want to spend every morning proving I can,” I answered calmly..
