“Clara didn’t get her paint sample boxes either,” Leo said.

“No,” I said, laying the folded yellow blankets neatly in the top dresser drawer.

“She didn’t get anything from this house.”

Judge Evelyn Norris had signed the final decree five weeks earlier, setting aside every line of the fraudulent surrender agreement Julian had tried to force on me.

The deed to our four-bedroom house on Elm Street was back in my name alone, cleared of every unauthorized mortgage lien Julian had tried to attach behind my back.

Clara Sterling was still in the county jail on forty thousand dollars bond, facing three felony counts of forgery and criminal identity theft.