Maybe it’s the adrenaline still humming in my veins. Or maybe it’s the task I’ll have to carry out soon that enabled me to have this money.
I make a beeline straight to the art studio, where I hid the mortgage papers.
After I threw them on Jonathan’s floor, and he left for the UK, I went back in there for them. That was careless to just leave them around for someone to find. To take to mom and give her stress she doesn’t need.
He had taken the letter with my doctor’s exam with him and I clinch my jaw remembering it was gone.
My heart clenches as I call the mortgage company and start the transfer. The process is mechanical—routing numbers, security codes, verification steps—but my hands shake the entire time. Every second feels like a countdown. Like someone’s going to call and say it’s too late.
But then…the transfer is complete.
And just like that, the mortgage is gone. Paid. Cleared. No more foreclosure notices. No more threats. No more shame.
I press my palms to my face and let out a shuddering breath. Tears burn at the edges of my eyes—grief and relief tangled up in one overwhelming release.
This house was never just a structure. It’s memories. It’s safety. It’s my mother’s final years.
And for a terrifying moment, I thought I’d failed her. And my dad.
I allow myself to cry—just for a moment. For what we almost lost.
But I hear Ben downstairs with Grace and I suddenly feel so selfish. Since finding those papers, I’d only been worried about this house. About us. I hadn’t even thought of Ben.
He lives here too. For decades, he’s lives on the property and taken care of the horses.
If Jonathan stopped paying the bills, he probably hasn’t pain Ben either.
Ben is brushing Grace when I find him, her pale-blonde coat glinting under the late sun. He glances up with a crooked smile as I approach.
“I didn’t know you were here, Cass.”
“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” I say, running a hand down Grace’s neck. She nuzzles me, always so sweet and aware.
There’s a knot forming in my gut but I have to ask.
“Has Jonathan been behind on your pay?”
Ben hesitates, eyes drifting to the horizon. “Well… yeah,” he admits, voice quiet. “Last few months have been a little light. I figured, with everything going on with your mama, maybe it just slipped through the cracks.”
It didn’t slip.
It was ignored.
I swallow the rage and the guilt, pull out my phone, and open the banking app again. “I’m paying you today. The full amount. Plus a bonus.”
He protests, of course. Says it’s not necessary, says I don’t have to do that.
But I do.
I do because it’s the right thing. Because he’s earned it a hundred times over. Because he stayed when everything else was falling apart.
He grips my shoulder after the transfer goes through and says something about my father being proud. I can’t look at him when he does. I think if I do, I’ll cry again.
Inside the house, I find Shanae in the kitchen.
Her expression shifts the second I ask the same question. She doesn’t try to lie. Just smiles that knowing, tired smile and tells me not to worry.
I pay her too. Quietly. No fanfare. And I make her promise not to tell my mother.
