The door on Nora’s tablet swung inward, and my father entered our living room as though he already owned everything inside it.
Ava followed him, turning a ring of keys around one finger.
The courtroom remained so quiet that the tablet’s weak microphone captured every sound: the scrape of the door, my father’s shoes crossing the floor, Ava setting her purse on my kitchen counter.
The timestamp showed the previous Saturday afternoon, when Nora and I had supposedly been at the park.
I remembered that day.
Rain had started before lunch, and Nora had asked to stay home while I went to the pharmacy.
She had been recording a school project about the model bridge she built from craft sticks.
I had never known anyone entered the house while I was gone.
On the video, Ava walked slowly around the room.
“This wall can come down,” she said.
“Then I can make the kitchen bigger.”
My father glanced toward the hallway leading to our bedrooms.
“Wait until the court order,” he said.
Ava stopped spinning the keys.
“What if Clara fights it?”
“She can wave receipts around all she wants.
The land is ours.”
At the plaintiffs’ table, my father’s face hardened.
Their lawyer raised an objection, arguing that the recording had not been authenticated and might have been edited.
The judge held up one hand.
“She is not ruling on it yet,” the judge said.
“She is listening.”
The video continued.
Ava moved toward the built-in shelves I had designed around the living-room window.
She ran her fingers along the woodwork as if choosing furniture in a showroom.
“Mom feels guilty,” she said.
“She’ll get over it.”
“She keeps saying Clara spent everything she had.”
My father exhaled impatiently.
“Clara built it because we told her she could live here.
That does not mean she owns it.”
Ava lowered her voice.
“You told her it would be hers.”
My entire body went still.
Across the room, my mother closed her eyes.
My father on the screen stared through the window toward the main house.
“I said what I had to say so she would pay for it,” he answered.
No one in the courtroom moved.
The sentence was not loud.
It was almost casual, spoken with the confidence of someone who had repeated the justification until it no longer sounded cruel to him.
On the recording, Ava gave a nervous laugh.
“That sounds terrible.”
“It was practical.
We could not afford to develop the back of the property.
Clara could.
Now the building is finished, the utilities are connected, and you need somewhere to live.”
Ava picked up the keys again.
“And once she’s out?”
“We change the locks immediately.
If she leaves anything behind, box it up.
Do not let her come back without someone watching.”
My throat tightened.
They were discussing Nora’s clothes, her drawings, the stuffed rabbit she slept with every night, as though our lives were clutter to be cleared from their investment.
Then my mother appeared in the doorway on the tablet.
I had not seen her enter.
Neither, apparently, had Nora’s camera.
