My fingers went tight around the phone.

“How much?”

“Forty-two thousand off the line of credit so far.

Maybe more.

I’m still walking it back.”

That was the moment I let go of the last thin thread of hope that this could still somehow be a misunderstanding, a mess, a thing we could sit down and untangle.

Because that house had been mine before Damon was ever in it.

My parents had helped me with the original down payment — my father writing the check with the quiet pride of a man helping his daughter build something.