He sat down hard on one of the kitchen stools. The room smelled like the roast I had put in at noon. For a long minute neither of us spoke. Then he asked the question I knew was coming. “Did you ever plan to tell me?”

I met his eyes. “When the papers were served. Not before.”

He nodded once, slow. “She’s going to fight.”

“Let her,” I said. “The documents are clean.”

I don’t even know why I remember this part but the oven was still ticking as it cooled. Mark reached for my hand across the counter and his palm felt cold. We didn’t talk about it again that night.

The third letter came the next week with Patricia’s name in bold at the top. I left it on the table where Mark would see it when he got home. He read it standing up. When he finished he folded it once and set it down. “She called me a traitor,” he said.

I didn’t answer. There was nothing left to say. That night I lay awake listening to the neighbor’s dog bark at something in the wash. Mark’s breathing was steady beside me. I thought about the house Patricia raised her boys in, the one with the pool she never let me swim in because I wasn’t blood. I had told myself back then it didn’t matter. Turns out it did.

By morning the fourth letter had arrived from her lawyer. I read it at the kitchen table while the coffee brewed. The language was formal but the threat was clear. They planned to challenge the collateral clause in court. I called my lawyer again. He sounded almost cheerful. “They’ll lose,” he said. “You have her signature on every page.”

I thanked him and hung up. Then I walked outside and stood in the driveway looking at the mountains the way I used to when we first moved here.

The air was already hot through my shoes. My phone buzzed with Patricia’s name again. I let it go to voicemail.

When Mark came home that evening he found me at the table with the letters spread out. He didn’t ask what I had decided. He just sat down across from me and said, “Whatever you need.”

I slid the stack toward him. “Read them.”

He did. When he reached the last one he looked up. “She’s going to lose the house.”

“Yes.”

He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “She chose Derek every single time.”

I reached across the table and took his hand. Outside the sun was setting behind the mountains turning the sky that old copper color. Inside the only sound was the steady tick of the clock above the stove.