A week later, they asked Kate to come not on Saturday morning as usual, but on Friday evening.
A folder of documents lay on the table.
Thomas pushed it toward his daughter.
“What is this, Dad?”
“The apartment.”
He paused.
“It belongs to you now. We signed it over.”
Kate did not touch the folder for a long moment.
Then she slowly raised her eyes to her parents.
The confusion in her expression was so deep that Margaret turned toward the window.
“What have you done? What about Oliver? You always said the apartment would be his.”
“We did,” Margaret said softly. “We said many things, Kate. And we failed to see too much. Forgive us. For sending you to community college. For the old coat. For all of it.”
“Mom, please…”
“Let her finish,” Thomas said unexpectedly.
He took his daughter’s hand in his large, rough one.
“For once, allow us to do something that is meant for you first. Sophie needs a room of her own. And you need a home no one can ask you to leave in the middle of winter, the way your landlord did last year.”
Kate began to cry.
The tears came quietly, almost like those of a child.
She covered her face with both hands.
Sophie came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck.
She did not yet understand everything that had happened.
But she knew that something wonderful had.
Oliver found out about the apartment about a month later.
He did not call himself.
Emma called instead.
“Margaret, do you have any idea what you’ve done? Everyone knows you always loved Kate more! Oliver has counted on that apartment for years, and now you…”
“Emma,” Margaret said, stopping her calmly. “The truth is that we loved Kate less. That is exactly what we did. We only realized it too late. And I never gave you the jar of preserves from the summer kitchen. I heard every word you and Oliver said beneath the grapevine.”
Silence followed on the other end.
Then Emma replied coldly, “In that case, don’t expect to see us or Arthur again.”
The call ended.
Margaret kept holding the phone for several seconds.
She was hurt.
She did not pretend otherwise.
A son was still a son.
Oliver’s graduation photograph remained on the windowsill.
He was wearing the suit that Margaret and Thomas had once paid for with nearly half a month’s wages.
But now another photograph stood beside it.
Kate and Sophie were pictured outside the apartment in the city.
Kate held a new key in her hand.
For the first time in many years, her daughter was smiling with such quiet peace that she looked as though she no longer had anywhere else she needed to hurry to.
The following Saturday morning, the gate creaked open shortly before half past eight.
“Mom! Dad! I’m here! Now show me what’s gone wrong with the roof this time!” Kate called from the yard.
Thomas smiled.
He rose from his chair.
And went to open the gate for his daughter.