Inside were papers I never knew existed.
Property records. County filings. A copy of our original mortgage documents. The same ones I remembered signing that day at the lawyer’s office.
Except this copy had something ours didn’t.
A second document, filed two years after we bought the house. Quietly adding Deloris as a co-owner on the deed itself. Not just a co-signer on the loan. An actual owner. Fifteen percent, according to the filing.
I sat down right there on the garage floor, papers spread across my knees. Reading the legal language over and over. Trying to make it mean something other than what it clearly meant. Notarized. County-stamped. Dated the same month as a refinance I barely remembered. Back when Milo was still in diapers and every month felt like a blur of exhaustion.
I checked the date against my own memory three separate times. Trying to place exactly what was happening in our lives during that particular month. Milo’s colic. Caleb’s overnight shifts covering for a coworker on leave. A month so consumed by simple survival. That neither of us had any energy left over to question paperwork Deloris assured us was routine.
I read it four times before the words fully landed.
