My head snapped up. “What lake house?”
***
The lake house was an hour out of town, the only major asset Celia wanted. I did a deep dive in the divorce group to see if she’d talked about it, and pulled up a post from several months ago.
Celia M > Divorced Mamas
I did it. I asked for the lake house as part of the settlement. The thing is, Phillip doesn’t even want it. He hates the place with its outdated appliances, mismatched furniture, and, according to him, “Nothing to do there but stare out the window.” But I love it. I used to take the kids for the entire summer, and it would be eleven weeks of heaven. No Phillip. No outbursts about how much I tipped the gardener, or whether I should get the housekeeper in an extra day each week. Just the three of us playing games, doing puzzles, going for long walks around the lake. Once, when Phillip had to travel over the holidays, we even spent Christmas there. It felt like a fairytale. Like a dream. That lake house is my home, in a way our Reading house never was.
When we spoke again over the phone, two days after our golf game, Phillip told me the deed was in his name only, but had been acquired during the course of the marriage. No loans or liens on the property. Worth about $250,000, it was his to give away if he was so inclined.
Which he wasn’t.
“Maybe you could gift it to the kids,” I suggested.
“Absolutely not. They’d just let her live there for free.”
Ron’s parting words to my mother floated into my mind: There are winners and losers, Rosie.
I’d done a little research since our golf game. I kept my tone casual, a favor being offered. “Here’s an idea,” I said. “I could buy it at a steep discount. Say, $20,000? Once the divorce is final, I can deed it back to you, and you’ll be free to sell it. But we’ll need to do it sooner rather than later, in order for the title to record before your valuation date.”
Phillip was silent on the other end of the call, and I waited. We’d already walked so far beyond the concepts of fair and honorable, adding the lake house wouldn’t be much more of a leap. Just one more thing I was helping him steal from his wife.
I rushed to fill in the silence, to show him I was willing to offer an out, if he wanted one. “If that feels too risky, no is a perfectly acceptable answer. I’m sure your lawyers could lock it down for you—force her to buy you out. Or maybe give her some stock options in the business in exchange for the property. But it’ll be at full market value if you decide to go that way.”
“Can we do that?” he asked. “Sell it so low?”
“Believe it or not, it happens all the time,” I told him. “You can sell a property for as little as you want. There will be some tax liability on the other end, but there are ways to get around it if the property is worth it to you.”
“I don’t want it for myself; I just don’t want her to have it.”
Determination hardened into a tight stone inside my chest. “Then let’s make sure she doesn’t get it.”
***
A week after our golf game, I showed up at Phillip’s house with a moving van and movers. “What’s this?” he said when he answered the door.
I gestured for the movers to wait with the truck for a moment, and Phillip and I stepped into the front hall. “I need you to pick two rooms you don’t spend much time in so we can empty the furniture and get started.”
“Wait, what?”
I glanced over my shoulder, the three guys I’d hired lounging in the frigid morning sunshine. “You can’t just wire me money, Phillip. We have to actually appear to be doing the work, and part of that work is reconfiguring your physical space. Pick two rooms, we’ll move out the furniture, rugs and window coverings, put drop cloths down, paint samples on the walls, and then if anyone asks, you can show them where we’ve decided to start.”