I used my key because Con had not returned three calls and it was the ninth day his mail was spilling out of the box on Vine Street. His building in Over-the-Rhine had that fake citrus smell from a plug-in in the elevator. I rode up four floors with a bag of still-warm bagels and the condo association’s final notice about the parking spot.
The door swung open on a short red bathrobe and a lot of dark hair. The woman standing at the breakfast bar was maybe thirty-two, with wet ends dripping on the quartz counter, and she had one hand around a mug that said WORLD’S BEST DAD.
Con came in from the bathroom in a Bengals hoodie and no socks. His lips had gone the color of the drywall.
“Didn’t expect you,” he said.
“Clearly,” I said. I set the bagels on the entry table and looked at the woman. “I’m Diane. Con’s mother. Also the woman who pays the property taxes on this place sometimes.”
She gave me a little smirk. “Shayla. I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That Con has a life.”
I wanted to say several things. Instead, I watched Con turn the mug around so the white letters faced the wall.
“Your wife and your daughter have been staying at my house for six weeks because you said you needed to be closer to the office,” I said. “That’s a life too.”
Shayla shrugged one shoulder. “Nobody said you had to play hotel.”
I left the key on top of the mail pile. The elevator smelled the same going down.
The drive back to Amberley Village took twenty-six minutes. I ran a yellow light on Montgomery Road. I wanted to throw the receipt from the bagel shop out the window, but I put it in the cup holder and tapped the steering wheel with my thumb.
At home, Julia was spooning oatmeal into Ruby’s mouth while the baby slapped the tray. The slow cooker on the counter still had six hours left on the pork shoulder, and the kitchen smelled like Dr Pepper and onion.
“How’s Con?” Julia asked, without turning around.
“He’s fine,” I said. “He had company.”
Julia set down the spoon. “Company or a company?”
I don’t know why that made me want to cry. Maybe because she already knew the answer. I opened the camera roll on my phone and showed her the photo I had taken of the key on top of the mail, the red robe just visible in the background.
Julia lowered herself into the chair across from Ruby. She put both hands flat on the table.
“I gave up my apartment for that,” she said. “I gave up my lease on Elm Street.”
Before I could answer, the landline rang. I still keep a landline because Walter refuses to text. It was Tom Mirelli, the foreman from Walter’s company. Walter had collapsed in the job trailer on a project in Symmes Township. The ambulance was there. They were working on him.
I don’t remember hanging up. I remember grabbing the car keys and hearing Julia say she would call Con. The neighbor’s basset hound started howling before the paramedics even got to the house.
At Bethesda North they put us in a room with a box of tissues and a plastic pitcher of water. A doctor with a name tag that said OKAFOR told us Walter’s heart had stopped twice before he reached the hospital. She said “time of death” like it was one word.
Con got there forty minutes later. He smelled like that same citrus plug-in. His phone buzzed, and I saw the name SHAYLA with a heart emoji before he flipped it over.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” he said. Then, maybe three breaths later: “Dad’s company. Who runs it now?”
Julia looked at him across the room. I didn’t have to. Julia had Ruby against her hip.
“You can go back to your life,” Julia told him. “I’ll handle the rest with Diane.”
He ignored that. He looked at me. “It’s a real question. There’s a board, there’s payroll. You can’t just sit on it.”
I said, “Your father’s body is still in the room, Con.”
He said, “I know. I know. I’m asking because he would want a plan.” He was already typing something on his phone beneath the table.
Walter’s will was simple. Everything came to me. The condominium Con lived in had my name on the mortgage after one refinance. The company shares sat in a trust with me as trustee. The term life policy had an eight hundred sixty thousand dollar payout. It had been updated four years ago, long before Shayla started leaving her conditioner in Con’s shower.
I met with an estate attorney named Monica Reyes in a building off Fourth Street. Her office had a wall of law books that still had cellophane on some of them. She put a yellow legal pad between us and explained that the money was mine outright, and the company was mine to sell or run. “Your son has no automatic right to either.”
I knew Con thought differently. Two weeks after the funeral, he came to the house with a folder from a financial planner and a crisp shirt with the collar too open.
Julia was in the kitchen opening a can of formula. Ruby sat on the floor with a stacking toy. When Con walked in, the room got smaller.
“I’ve had someone look at the buy-sell agreement,” he said. “Dad’s partner wants out. I can take his shares. You’d stay as trustee, but I’d run the day-to-day.”
He opened the folder and put a term sheet on the counter. The last line said his proposed annual salary: one hundred forty thousand. I didn’t touch it.
“Mom, I’m trying to be reasonable,” he said.
I went to the drawer where I keep the power bills and took a single sheet from Fidelity. It showed a transfer confirmation. Eight hundred sixty thousand dollars, moved into an Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 account. The account owner was Julia. The beneficiary was Ruby. The transaction date was that morning.
I pushed it across the counter next to his term sheet.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Ruby’s education,” I said. “Your father’s life insurance.”
Con’s jaw moved, but no sound came out. Then he said, “You can’t do that. That’s my inheritance. I’m his son.”
“You’re Ruby’s father,” I said. “Start acting like it, and maybe there will be something left in my will. But this money has a name on it, and it’s not yours.”
He picked up the paper and read the account number twice. I could see him calculating what was left. The house, the company, the boat Walter kept at Lake Cumberland.
From the front step came a knock. I opened the door. Shayla stood there in white jeans and sunglasses, her keys in one hand. A red Honda with Ohio plates idled at the curb.
“I’m parked in a no-parking zone,” she said. “Is this going to take long? Con said twenty minutes.”
“He might be longer,” I said.
She looked past me toward the kitchen and seemed to understand the air. Then she looked back at me. “Did he get what he came for?”
“I gave him a copy of the 529 statement,” I said. “He can show his financial planner.”
Shayla took off her sunglasses. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
She stepped back off the porch and walked to her car. I watched her get in, light a cigarette, and send a text. Con’s phone buzzed in the kitchen. He didn’t answer it.
Julia came out of the kitchen with Ruby on her hip and put the stacking toy in the diaper bag. She didn’t say anything. She just took a blue permanent marker from the junk drawer and wrote FOR RUBY across the front of Con’s folder.
Con sat down on the porch steps and stayed there. Through the window I could see the screen of his phone light up with another message from Shayla. I couldn’t read it. I didn’t need to.
I closed the door and twisted the deadbolt. The key turned with a sound like a pen clicking.
