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about.”
    “Shoot.”
    “I called my dad’s attorney this morning. I asked him how I could go about putting the house in your name.”
    “I don’t understand. Why would you do that?”
    “Because I think it rightfully belongs to you.”
    “Nina, your father bought this house before he even met my mother.”
    “It’s
her
house, Kyle. She’s the one who lived in it all these years, she’s paid the taxes and planted the flowers and trimmed the hedges. It was hers. Now it’s yours.”
    “Nina, I don’t think you should make any hasty decisions. I mean, it’s very generous of you, but you really need to think this through.”
    “I have thought it through. I thought about it all night last night. I know it’s the right thing to do, Kyle.”
    “I don’t know what to say.” He was clearly stunned. “Nina, that’s incredibly generous of you, but I can’t let you give away your inheritance like that.”
    “It’s already done. Or will be, as soon as Mr. Wexler completes the paperwork and I sign it. Which I will do in the morning. And as far as my inheritance is concerned, let’s just say I’ve already gotten everything from my father that I’m going to get.”
    “I wish I could think of something to say,” Kyle told her. “I mean, about your father.”
    “There’s nothing you or anyone could say. He was what he was. Whatever that might have been. He ruined all our lives. You seem to have risen above it all, and I can see why you’d have wanted a career in law enforcement. I’ve managed to make a life for myself in spite of him. Your mother was the real victim here. I wish I’d been mature enough to realize that before now. No one should be asked to carry the burdens she was forced to bear. I wish I’d . . .”
    “Don’t, Nina. Don’t second guess yourself.”
    “It’s difficult not to, when I go upstairs into my old room and find that she still kept flowers in there, apparently in the hopes that I’d come to visit. Or when I realize that all the years I’d brushed her off as my father’s wife and nothing more than that, she’d really tried to be there for me, and would have been if I’d let her.” She blew out a long breath. “I was very immature and self-centered to have treated her the way I did, to not have seen how she had tried to help me through that time.”
    “You were very young, and you had your own burdens to bear.”
    “That doesn’t excuse the way—”
    He held up one hand, and said, “She was all right with it, Nina. I think she understood how difficult it had been for you, with your mother dying and you having to move here immediately after. She knew how hard that was. She knew that you had a lot to deal with. I think you’re right, she wanted to help you, but she understood why you didn’t let her.” His smile was sad. “It happens that way sometimes. She didn’t hold it against you.”
    “Well, it was my loss, not hers.”
    “I think maybe you both lost a little something.”
    “In any event, the house and everything in it is yours—will be yours—and you can sell it or move into it or do whatever you like with it.”
    “I don’t feel right about this.”
    “I’m sorry, but I feel very right about it.” She patted his right hand and he covered hers with his left.
    “We’ll split it.”
    “Uh-uh.” She shook her head.
    “I’ll send you the money for the furniture, then . . .”
    “You’re not following me, Kyle. I want nada. Zero. Zilch. It’s yours.” She squeezed his hands, then extracted her own. “You said you and Marcie were separating. Live here if you like. Or sell it and buy something else. Or sell it and put the money in trust for your kids. Start or add to their college funds. Whatever makes you happy.”
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    “Then don’t say anything. Particularly, don’t argue with me anymore. There is absolutely nothing you can say that will change my mind.”
    “How ’bout if I tell you how much the houses