Chapter 8 - The AppraisalOn Monday morning, I flew back to Seattle.
The tropical warmth of Mexico gave way to the crisp, damp November air of the Pacific Northwest. I drove straight from SeaTac to my office in downtown Seattle, spending the day reviewing software architecture deployments and catching up on corporate roadmaps. Work was simple; numbers either compiled or they failed. Logic governed everything.
At 3:00 PM, my phone buzzed with an incoming call from an unfamiliar local number.
"Emma? This is Marcus Vance."
I sat back in my ergonomic office chair, looking out at the grey Seattle skyline. "Hello, Dad."
His voice sounded entirely stripped of the booming, expansive resonance he usually projected. He sounded small, frail, and exhausted.
"Emma... I'm calling from my lawyer's office," my father said quietly. "We met with a real estate attorney this morning."
"I know," I said. "Marcy told me they received a notice of appearance."
"The attorney looked at the agreement, Emma," my father said, his voice cracking slightly. "He said... he said the contract is ironclad. He told us there’s no ground to challenge the title transfer."
"Because Marcy drafted it properly," I replied flatly. "And because you signed it willingly in front of a notary."
"We didn't think you’d actually do it," he whispered. "We thought... we thought we were family."
"Dad," I said, leaning forward and resting my elbows on the mahogany desk. "When you sat at that table six months ago, I gave you my life savings. I didn't ask for interest. I didn't ask for equity bonuses. I asked for honesty. And for six months, neither you nor Mom mentioned a single word about repayment. When I asked, you brushed me off. And then you let Lena tell me I wasn't sophisticated enough to eat dinner in the house I paid for."
A long, ragged sigh came through the speaker.
"Lena... Lena didn't understand what was at stake," he tried to explain.
"No, Dad," I corrected him sharply. "Lena understood perfectly. She just assumed that no matter what she did, I would swallow my pride and keep paying the bills. And you let her believe it."
"What do you want us to do, Emma?" he asked, his tone entirely defeated. "We can't afford $4,800 a month. My land dispute... it's tied up in probate for at least another year. We don't have the cash."
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I took a slow, deep breath.
"Then you have twenty-six days left on the notice," I said. "I’ve instructed Marcy to hire a staging and sales team. The house goes on the market January 1st."
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