Before I could process it, someone knocked on my door hard, three loud bangs that rattled the frame. I looked through the peephole and opened the door to find Jacob standing there looking disheveled, shirt wrinkled, hair uncombed, holding a folder like he was practicing what to say. Behind him stood Ellie with her arms crossed and sunglasses hiding her eyes.
The first words out of her mouth weren’t I’m sorry.
They were: “You just ruined our lives.”
I stepped aside silently and let them in. They sat on the couch. I stood.
The silence stretched too long, so I broke it.
“You hurt me,” I said quietly.
Ellie rolled her eyes. “I tripped. It wasn’t my fault you’re so fragile.”
Jacob cut in, “Ellie—”
But she kept going. “She was in our kitchen, judging everything, telling me how to raise a child I haven’t even had yet. You think I’m just going to take that?”
I blinked once, then spoke with the calm of a woman who had been pushed too far.
“You hit me, Ellie. And when I didn’t respond the way you expected, you both shut me out like I was disposable furniture.”
Jacob shifted, uncomfortable. “She said it was an accident,” he muttered.
I raised my cast. The bruising was dark now, purple and blue, the swelling worse. “You didn’t even come downstairs, Jacob.”
He looked like he’d been slapped.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Jacob placed the folder on the coffee table and slid it toward me. “We can’t afford another co-signer,” he said. “They’re giving us seventy-two hours to update the application or the home goes to the next buyer. We’ll lose the house.”
I looked down at the folder. Mortgage terms. Updated rates. A plea typed out in desperation.
“Do you want me back in your lives?” I asked.
Jacob hesitated, then nodded.
“Do you want me in this baby’s life?”
Another nod, slower.
I turned to Ellie. “And you?”
She shrugged. “You’re his mom, not mine. I’ll tolerate you if you sign those papers.”
And just like that, the mask dropped. She didn’t want family. She wanted security. Her voice was hollow of warmth but full of expectation.
I smiled gently and walked to the coffee table. I sat down, opened the folder, picked up the pen, clicked it, and paused.
“I’ll sign it if you apologize out loud, right now.”
Ellie’s face twisted. “You’re seriously going to make this about pride?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m making it about respect.”
Jacob looked at Ellie, pleading without words.