“Dad.” His voice was clipped, too tight, too prepared. I knew that tone. It was the tone he used when he had already made a bad decision and wanted me to accept it before I had time to understand it. “I need to tell you something, and I need you to just listen and not make it a whole thing.”
I lowered the mug.
The lake outside my window remained perfectly still.
“Good morning to you, too, Kyle.”
He exhaled, impatient already. “It’s about the cabin.”
The word cabin moved through the room differently when he said it. Carelessly. Like he was talking about a storage unit.
“What about it?”
A pause.
“I sold it.”
I did not speak.
The old wall clock above the pantry ticked once. Then again. Somewhere in the pipes, the furnace groaned awake.
Kyle rushed into the silence. “The deal closed yesterday. It’s a development group out of Chicago. Lakefront Holdings. They’re putting together some kind of resort complex. High-end cabins, event space, marina upgrades, that kind of thing. They want to break ground before winter, so they need the property vacant right away.”
I looked down at my coffee. A thin curl of steam lifted from it, fragile and temporary.
“Vacant,” I repeated.
