My Family Tried to Evict Me from the Craftsman House My Grandparents Left Me
The conference room door clicked shut, leaving Helen and me alone in the quiet, carpeted hallway of Richard Morrison’s Third Street office. Inside the room we had just left, Richard was going through the notary logs with my father and Ashley, checking the blue ink registration stamps from the morning the quitclaim deed had been filed at the county recorder’s office. The walls of the hallway were lined with framed black-and-white photographs of Riverside in the nineteen-thirties, showing the citrus groves, the old brick courthouse, and the dusty palms of Seventh Street before the modern concrete towers were built.
Helen smoothed her floral skirt down over her knees with both hands, her palms making a dry, rhythmic scraping sound against the fabric. She was sitting on a low leather bench beneath a painting of Mount Rubidoux, her heels pressed tightly together as if she were trying to occupy as little space as possible.
“You have to stop this, Emily,” she said.
She did not look at me. Her eyes remained fixed on the heavy brass door handle of the conference room where her husband and her older daughter were still answering questions.
