Page 102 of Knocked Up

"You lost an argument to a baby."

"She wanted to be held and I formed a view that she was correct," Eli said. He put his hand back over her and closed his eyes.

The deed came through on the 2nd of July.

Walt's house sold on the 9th of June for $452,000. We exercised the buy-back option inside the window, with proof of financing. The price came out of the 1998 formula at $409,600. Apex's lawyers spent six weeks trying to argue that a house on the land made the option void. It did not, because June Reeves did not read the small print for a hobby.

Beckett read every page and so did I, at the kitchen table with the light on and a lawyer named Fran on speaker. Neither of us was alone in a room at any point.

Both names, his and mine, on my mother's ground.

I printed it, because I'm my mother's daughter. The photocopy went on the fridge under a magnet shaped like a corgi.

Grant Fessler came on the Thursday.

He had come four times in nine months, always unannounced and always at about eleven. He always had the same folder and the same opening, which is that he was in the area.

I was in the surgical suite with a cat open on the table, so I did not see it. I have three accounts and they agree on everything except the cat.

Eli got to the door first, because Eli is always first. He opened it two feet and stood in it. Behind him came a man who is six foot four, with a nine-week-old strapped to his chest and a bottle in one hand. Behind both of them was eighty pounds of grey-faced German shepherd, up off the floor for the second time that decade. He came level with Beckett's knee and did not do anything at all, because he did not have to.

And Margaret was on the mailbox post, about eighteen inches from Grant Fessler's ear.

"Morning," Eli said.

Fessler said he was in the area. Fessler said Apex had reviewed the file and there was a very improved number. He had it right here. He got about nine words into the second sentence.

"She's in surgery," Eli said.

"I can wait."

"You can't," Beckett said.

That is the entire quotation. All three accounts agree on it. My brother says it was said the way a person tells somebody the kitchen closes at nine.

Marisol says Margaret leaned forward at that point. I've known that cat eleven years and I believe it.

He put the folder back under his arm and went down the path. Eli shut the door. Willa had slept through the whole proceeding. She woke up in the hall and screamed the house down about something unrelated.

I got out of surgery at half twelve and stood in the corridor in my scrubs with my mask round my neck. I laughed until I had to hold the door frame.

That night I stood at the freezer door on my own.

Everybody was asleep. It was twenty past eleven. The photocopy of the deed was under the corgi magnet at my left hand. The charter was where it has been since the 19th of December. The marker was on the counter now instead of on top of the refrigerator, which is a thing nobody has commented on since April.

I read the whole board. There were seven clauses in my handwriting and two amendments in his. There were eight sets of initials. At the bottom was a term in red capitals that I wrote in about four seconds because I was frightened.

I took the cap off with my teeth.

And I put a line through clause two, the rent one. It says rent is paid in clinic labor and nobody in this house pays rent in money. He was in breach of it on the day he signed it. It cost us the worst night we have had.

Underneath it, in my own hand, Rent: $0. Forever.

It is not very good. I write things like a chart. That is a sentence I wrote because I could not think of a better one and decided not to keep trying.

Then I moved down two lines to clause five.

End date: the due date.