"I used you. You let yourself be used because you wanted the same day. Don't interrupt. You did. You also drove me because I threatened you with a scene, and because you love me, and those were both in the car. If you tell this later, tell both. I am tired of single-cause stories. They are how we got a conflict flag in a computer."
He looked at Ruth.
"I signed because I was angry at you for being able to leave. Leaving is not a sin. You have a life. Your mother wanted you to have it. I wanted you to have it. I hated the wanting, some nights, when the house was loud with nothing. Taking you off the account was a way of saying come back and fight me, which is a miserable way to ask your child to visit. It worked. You are here. I am ashamed of the method and not entirely sorry for the result. You can hate that. It's still the sentence."
He sat back. The coat creaked. The unfinished thing was no longer unfinished, and the finished thing did not make anyone clean.
"There is more," he said. "I want a new card. Not March. Not Thursday. A third thing. Both of them on it with me. Neither of them alone. The house not sold while I am in it and can say so. If a day comes when I cannot say so, they decide together. Both signatures, or no sale. If they cannot agree, Denise, or whoever sits in your chair then, they wait. They do not break the tie by whoever shouted last. Put that in the plainest language your people have. I don't want poetry in the file. Poetry is how I got a practice sentence on a crossword and a war in a lobby."
Denise had been writing. She stopped.
"I can draft that," she said. "A new signature card naming both, and a separate instruction for the real estate, which isn't something a signature card carries by itself. You'll want it witnessed. I can witness. You can take it to a lawyer if you want more armor. I'm not insulted if you do. Capacity today, from what I see, is you having a reason and stating it and knowing the names of the people in the room. I'll note that. I'll also note that you described a day last week when you acted inside a fear that had invented a fact. That doesn't void your right to speak today. It does mean I'm going to ask you, in my notes, to confirm the new instruction when the draft is in front of you, not only now, when the words are still warm."
"Ask me," Arthur said.