“I’m Julian.

And you’re making a very big mistake if you think you’re kicking Valerie out of this house.”

My fingers trembled as I smoothed open the crisp margins of the filing and made myself read it.

It was a quitclaim deed, the legal instrument by which a person signs away their ownership of a property.

And stamped at the bottom of it, vivid and stark against the white fiber of the paper, verified by a state notary four months earlier, was my own signature.

My signature.