Dad asked what Patricia signed. I told him it was the manufacturers warranty registration, which it was, and which also acknowledged the unpaid balance for the system and authorized a lien against the property for it. Standard. The thing a contractor files when he installs a six thousand dollar system at cost and gets stiffed.
Here is what Patricia did not know, Dad. When I went to file the lien, the title came back in your name and Moms. Not Patricias. She has no ownership of that house at all. So when the bank in Atlanta saw a lien filed and called the property owner to verify, they did not call Patricia. They called the records, and the records are you.
Dad was quiet a long time. Then he said, so when Patricia refused to pay you, she was refusing to pay for a system in my house, with my money on the line, pretending it was hers to decide.
Yes sir. That is exactly it.
She told me my father gave me enough when I was a boy, and that she would keep me from Thanksgiving if I complained. She forgot the house she was so proud of was never hers to bargain with.
I charged them my cost, five thousand nine hundred dollars, not a dime of labor, because Dad is seventy-six with a bad heart and it was ninety-eight degrees and he needed cool air, not a markup. Patricia turned even that into a fight.
Dad paid me himself, from his own account, the account tied to his own house, the morning he got off the phone with me. He apologized for Patricia. I told him he did not need to. A son installs his fathers air conditioning. That is just what you do.
I went to Thanksgiving. It turned out Patricia did not get to decide that either. It is Dads house, Dads table, and Dads son, and she learned all three in one week. The system runs cool and quiet. Dads heart is holding. And the deed, as it always did, says exactly who belongs there.