I text it back. Have your attorney call Vivian. Everything is in order. He didn’t have an attorney yet.
He had assumed, because Derek had spent 6 years assuming things about our arrangement, that the divorce would be simple, mutual, clean.
Two people who built something together, dividing it down the middle. Vivian called his new attorney, a man named Roberts, who came recommended, but was working with incomplete information, and walked him through the documentation.
The apartment, purchased by me 22 months before Derek and I began dating. Deed, solely in my name, never amended.
Down payment, sourced from a documented inheritance, legally classified as separate property. Mortgage, paid from my personal account for the first 2 years before we married, and continued under the same account throughout the marriage.
There was nothing to divide. Because there was nothing jointly owned. Roberts called Vivian back the same afternoon.
She described the conversation to me later with the restraint of a professional, but I could hear the satisfaction underneath it.
He needed a moment, she said simply. Derek needed more than a moment. He called me three more times that evening.
On the fourth call, I answered. Dominique. His voice had changed entirely. The confidence was gone.
The apartment, nah, is mine, I said. It has always been mine. You can’t. We lived there.
We built our life there. My mother And there it was, the sentence he couldn’t finish.
My mother Dastar. Because suddenly, I understood what this call was actually about. It wasn’t just Derek on the other end of this phone.
Gloria had found out. Gloria, [snorts] who had walked through my home like it was her son’s inheritance.
Gloria, who had thrown a party to celebrate. Gloria, who had never once asked whose name was on the deed because she had assumed, the way entitled people always assume, that what she wanted to be true simply was.
Derek, I said carefully, your mother needs to find somewhere else to direct her energy.
This was never her house. It was never even yours. The silence on the line was enormous.
She came on a Friday evening. I saw her car from the window and took a breath, set down my book, and went to open the door before she could knock, because I was not going to let her feel like she had arrived unannounced and caught me off guard.
I was going to make it clear that I had seen her coming and had chosen to open the door anyway.
She stood on my porch, my porch, in her good coat, her church posture, her severe gray bun.
Her face was doing something I had never seen it do in 6 years. It was uncertain.
Dominique, she started. Gloria. I did not move aside to let her in. What can I do for you?
She reset her posture, tried the authority. I think we need to talk about this situation.
Derek is my son and what you’re doing bec- What I’m doing, I said, keeping my voice completely even, is finalizing a divorce that your son’s choices made necessary and protecting property that has been legally mine since before I ever met your family.
Her jaw tightened. You could be reasonable. You could let him Let him what, Gloria?
I tilted my head slightly. This house was never his. I never put his name on the deed.
I never put your name on any decision about this property. What exactly are you asking me to let him have?
