My son invited twenty-one people into my beach house without permission — then his wife told me there was no room for me.

Patricia walked me to my car after the hearing.

The rain that had been threatening all morning had arrived, light and steady, blurring the edges of the parking lot.

She held an umbrella over both of us and didn't say anything until we reached the car, which I appreciated more than I could have explained.

"It went as well as it could," she said.

"Yes."

"The property is clear.

I'll have the formal confirmation of dismissal sent to the title records office by end of week.

The encumbrance will be lifted."

"Thank you, Patricia.

For all of it."

She squeezed my arm once, the way a person does when words are beside the point, and walked back toward her own car.

I sat in the driver's seat for a moment with the engine off and the rain moving quietly across the windshield.

Then someone knocked on the passenger window.

Robert.

He was standing in the rain without an umbrella, his jacket already dark across the shoulders.

I unlocked the door.

He got in and pulled it shut and sat looking straight ahead.

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

"Your attorney left," I said.

"I know.

I asked him to." He was quiet for another beat.

"I want to say something without anyone advising me on how to say it."

"All right."

He turned to look at me.

His face was exhausted in a way I hadn't seen since the months after Henry died — a grief-adjacent exhaustion, the kind that comes from carrying something too heavy for too long.

"I told myself it was practical," he said.

"That you weren't going to be here forever.

That Megan and I had put real work into that place over the years.

New roof in 2019.

The deck repairs.

The plumbing.

I told myself that counted for something legally, and that I was just protecting what was going to be ours anyway." He stopped.

"But that wasn't really it."

"What was it really?"

He was quiet for long enough that I thought he might not answer.

"I was scared," he said.

"After Dad died, I kept thinking — what if you sold it?

What if you decided you didn't want to manage a property anymore, and you just sold it to strangers?

That place is the last thing I have of him.

The only place I can still feel him." His voice went rough at the edges.

"I didn't know how to say that to you.

So I let Megan find a legal strategy instead."

The rain was heavier now against the roof.

"Robert," I said slowly, "why didn't you just talk to me?"

"Because talking to you would have meant admitting that I was scared of losing Dad again." He pressed his hand to his mouth for a moment.

"And I didn't know how to do that."

I looked at my son — this sixty-three-year-old man sitting in my car in a wet jacket, saying the thing he should have said eight months ago, saying it now because there was nothing left to hide behind.

"That cottage was your father's project from the beginning," I said.

"Every board in that sunroom.

He built it so we'd have somewhere to bring you, when you were little.

So you'd grow up knowing what it felt like to have a place." I paused.

"I have never once considered selling it."

Robert closed his eyes.

"I know that," he said.

"I know that now."

"You should have known it before you walked into a courthouse."

"Yes." His voice was very quiet.

"I should have."

We sat there while the rain moved across the glass.