He wasn’t asking.
He was constructing the story.
“You fell,” he repeated more firmly.
“You’ve been having balance problems.”
Brittany understood immediately.
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s what happened.
We told you to stop using these stairs alone.”
I stared at both of them.
An hour earlier, Brittany had laughed over my body.
Now she was trying to turn attempted intimidation into an accident before anyone had even accused her.
Marcus was still listening.
Anthony took another step toward me.
“Dad, give me your phone.”
I tightened my good hand around it.
“No.”
His face changed.
The tenderness disappeared.
“You don’t understand what you’ve gotten involved in.”
That almost made me smile.
“No, Anthony.
You don’t.”
The first Apex man lifted the forged deed.
“He says he didn’t sign this.”
Anthony didn’t look at the page.
“He forgets things.”
“I don’t,” I said.
Brittany crossed her arms.
“He’s sixty-seven.
He gets confused.”
There are humiliations that make a person shrink, and there are humiliations so complete that they burn away whatever fear remains.
I had paid Anthony’s school bills.
I had sat beside him after his first breakup.
I had loaned him money I never expected returned.
I had held his child.
Now he needed me to be senile because the alternative was admitting he had stolen my identity, gambled with my home, and pushed me down the stairs when I became inconvenient.
I lifted the phone slightly.
“Marcus?”
“I’m here.”
Anthony stared at the device.
“Who the hell is Marcus?”
Marcus answered before I could.
“The man your father should have called three months ago.”
Anthony’s mouth opened.
Marcus continued, calm and almost conversational.
“Vincent, help is already on the way.
Don’t move unless you have to.”
The first Apex man swore softly.
Anthony lunged one step toward my phone.
The man blocked him with an arm.
Not to protect me, I realized.
To protect himself from whatever additional disaster Anthony might create.
“Don’t,” he told my son.
That one word finally broke Anthony’s confidence.
He looked from the men to me, then toward the damaged front door.
“What did you do, Dad?”
