Everyone Has a Key Except Me

Chapter 2 The Paper Trail

I was at my desk by seven the next morning, before the office had filled with the sounds of keyboards and coffee machines. I worked at an environmental consulting firm on the outskirts of a coastal city called Ashford Bay, and I had been with the company for nearly a decade. My title was Senior Project Manager, which sounded impressive and meant I basically ran the operations side of the business. I knew every contract that passed through our hands, every client that had ever hired us, every regulation that governed our industry. But more importantly, I knew how to research.

I had spent the ride to work thinking about the note I found on my coffee table. The handwriting was a woman's, small and precise. The word "appraisal" kept bouncing around in my head, and every time it landed, I felt that cold sensation again. So before I even opened my email, I did what I always did when something didn't make sense. I looked for the paper trail.

The first thing I did was pull up the county assessor's website. I typed in my property address and waited for the page to load. There was my name, the purchase date, the mortgage information, everything I already knew. But there was something new I hadn't seen before. A note in the corner of the screen, dated three weeks earlier, that said "Pending Transfer of Interest."

Transfer of interest. I didn't know what that meant, but I knew it wasn't good.

I wrote the phrase in my notebook and kept digging. The website was limited, but it gave me a reference number for the transaction, which led me to a filing at the county courthouse. That filing was attached to a real estate brokerage I didn't recognize, something called Barrett & Noble, which according to a quick search operated primarily in the luxury home market.

I sat back in my chair and stared at the screen.

My house was not a luxury home. It was a modest three-bedroom, two-bath, built in the 1990s, with a small yard and a driveway that cracked in the summer heat. I had bought it because it was affordable and because it had a kitchen with good light and because I could see myself being happy there. It was not the kind of property that Barrett & Noble would list. Unless someone had decided it should be.

I spend the next hour and a half building a file. I printed out the assessor's record, the transaction number, and the brokerage information. I looked up the brokerage's agents and found a woman named Susan Barrett, who had been in business for over twenty years and specialized in what the website called "estate planning and transition properties." I made a note of her contact info. I also searched for Charles Ashford, Grayson's father, and found that he had been involved in several real estate transactions in the past few years, usually as a buyer, occasionally as a seller. Nothing on my address, though. Not yet.

By the time my coworkers arrived, I had a folder in my bag and a plan in my head. I didn't know exactly what was happening with my house, but I knew the Ashford family had been talking about it without me. I knew they had keys they didn't need. I knew they came and went as they pleased, and I knew Caroline had been snooping through my cabinets for months.

The question was why.

At lunch, I called the brokerage from the stairwell. A woman answered on the second ring, her voice polite and professional. "Barrett & Noble, how may I direct your call?"

"I'm calling about a property," I said, keeping my voice steady. "I received a note about an appraisal, and I'd like to confirm the details."

There was a pause. "Of course. Can I have the address?"

I gave it to her. Another pause, longer this time. "I'm sorry, I'm not finding that property in our active listings. Can you give me the name of the agent or the client you spoke with?"

"I didn't speak with anyone. I found a note."

"I see." Her voice cooled slightly. "I'm going to have to transfer you to someone else. One moment."

The line clicked. Music played. I waited for three minutes, and then the call disconnected. Just like that. No explanation, no callback number, nothing.

I stood in the stairwell and felt my heart beating faster than it should have been. Something was wrong. Something had been wrong for a long time, and I had been too caught up in being polite to notice.

That evening, Grayson was home before me for the first time in weeks. He was in the kitchen when I walked in, drinking a beer and scrolling through his phone. He looked up and smiled, and I felt a flicker of the affection I used to feel all the time, the warmth that had carried me through the early months of our relationship. But it faded quickly.

"How was your day?" he asked.

"Fine. Yours?"

"Busy. But good." He set his phone down and crossed the room to kiss me. I let him, but I didn't lean into it the way I usually did. "You okay?"

"I need to ask you something."

He raised his eyebrows. "Sure."

"This morning I found a note on the coffee table about an appraisal." I watched his face carefully. "What's going on with the house?"

His expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. "What note?"

"A piece of paper with handwriting I didn't recognize. It said 'call me about the appraisal.' So I'm asking you. What appraisal?"

He laughed, but it sounded forced. "Naomi, I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe it was something from the mail, or a flyer—"

"It wasn't a flyer. It was handwritten. It said we needed to move before the end of the month."

He turned away and opened the refrigerator, pulling out another beer he didn't need. "I don't know anything about that. You should ask my mother. She probably left it."

"Why would your mother leave a note about my house on my coffee table?"

He didn't answer right away. He took a long drink from the bottle, and when he turned back to me, his face was smooth and pleasant again. "Naomi, I think you're reading too much into this. You've been stressed lately. Maybe you should go to bed early."

I stood in the kitchen, watching the man I was supposed to marry, and I felt something inside me c***k. It was a small c***k, barely perceptible, but I knew it was there. I didn't say anything else. I just nodded and walked to the bedroom, closing the door behind me.

I didn't go to bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled out my phone. I texted my friend Priya, a lawyer who had known me since college.

Naomi: I need your help with something. Can we talk tomorrow?

She replied almost immediately.

Priya: Absolutely. What's going on?

Naomi: I think something is happening with my house and Grayson's family is involved.

Priya: That's a serious accusation. Do you have proof?

I looked at the folder in my bag. I thought about the appraisal note, the brokerage that had hung up on me, the way Grayson's voice had changed when I asked him about it. I thought about all the times Caroline had gone through my cabinets, all the times Charles had sat in my living room without saying a word, all the times Meredith had looked at my things like she was cataloging them.

Naomi: I'm working on it.

Priya: Good. Don't do anything rash. And Naomi?

Naomi: Yeah?

Priya: Get a lock on that door.

I stared at her message for a long time. Then I put the phone down and looked at the door to my bedroom. I had a lock on it already. A simple twist lock that I had never used. But that wasn't what she meant. She meant the front door. She meant the door that everyone in Grayson's family had a key to, everyone except me.

I couldn't change the lock. Not yet. But I could start paying attention to what they were doing in my house. And that, I decided, was exactly what I was going to do.