My lawyer helped me arrange the ownership of the building.
The property was placed under a company with a name connected to the street where my grandmother had lived.
That detail mattered to me.
My grandmother's street had always meant something.
It was familiar.
It was part of my family.
And it gave me a way to keep my own name out of the everyday business.
I didn't want Rance calling me about the rent.
I didn't want to see him standing in front of my house with a payment question.
I didn't want to have to sit across from him every month and pretend we were two people who could comfortably discuss a building.
So I arranged for a property manager in DuBois to handle the lease.
The manager would take care of the communication.
The rent would go through the proper channels.
I could keep working my route without having to deal with my ex-husband.
That was the arrangement.
It wasn't complicated.
It was simply private.
When the new lease arrived at the shop, Rance saw the company name.
He didn't recognize it.
He assumed the building had been transferred to some business from outside town.
That was exactly what I wanted him to believe.
I later heard what he had said at the Sheetz.
Apparently, he found the whole situation amusing.
He told people I had sold the property to some outfit from the city.
He made it sound as though I had been unable to handle it.
I heard about it.
I didn't correct him.
I didn't explain who owned the company.
I didn't tell him whose signature was connected to the property.
I kept my mouth shut.
There was no reason to change anything.
His rent covered most of the mortgage payment.
Most.
Not all.
The remaining amount was mine to handle.
And I handled it.
Month after month.
I learned how to organize my money around the payment.
I learned which expenses could wait.
I learned how much overtime I needed to accept when it became available.
I took extra shifts.
I worked Saturdays.
I worked Christmas Eves.
There were days when I would finish my regular responsibilities and feel as though I had nothing left in me.
Then I would remember the mortgage.
And I would keep going.
I wasn't doing it because I wanted to prove something to the town.
I wasn't even doing it because I wanted Rance to feel sorry someday.
I was doing it because I had accepted the responsibility.
That was enough.
My work at the post office gave me a routine.
The property gave me another responsibility.
Between the two, there wasn't much room for unnecessary spending.
I didn't complain.
I didn't tell my neighbors how much the mortgage payment was.
I didn't discuss the property with the carriers at work.
I certainly didn't tell Rance.
He kept running his tire shop.
He kept paying the rent through the property manager.
As far as he knew, the company on his lease was just another business.
And I let him think that.
Nine years passed that way.
Nine years of seeing the building from the street.
Nine years of knowing what was happening inside without needing to ask.
Nine years of paying the amount that remained after the rent came in.
I sometimes wondered whether Rance ever thought about the property.
But I never had a reason to believe he suspected anything.
He seemed perfectly comfortable with the arrangement.
The building was where his business operated.
The lease was something he paid.
And I was still the woman delivering mail around Brookville.
That was how he saw me.
I had no intention of correcting his picture.
Then came March.
The bank's final payment had been made.
I had been working toward that moment for so long that I almost didn't know what to do when it arrived.
There was no celebration waiting for me.
No crowd.
No announcement.
Just a payment completed and the confirmation that the debt had finally been settled.
I drove to the Sheetz.
I bought a coffee.
I sat in my car with the bank's paperwork and looked at it.
Paid in full.
Those words were simple.
But I had spent nine years earning the right to read them.
I started crying.
Not a little.
I cried like somebody who had been holding her breath for a very long time.
I thought about all the Saturdays.
The Christmas Eves.
The overtime shifts.
The mornings when I had put on my uniform even though I was exhausted.
I thought about the day in the lawyer's office when Rance had smiled.
I thought about how close I had come to refusing the building.
Then I looked at the paper again.
Paid in full.
I stayed in that parking lot for a while.
Eventually, I wiped my face, put the paperwork away, and finished my coffee.
Then I went back to work.
There were still people waiting for their mail.
And I still had a route to finish.
Click here to continue reading: PART 4: My Niece Recognized the Signature on the Bank Papers, but My Ex-Husband Was Still Planning to Buy His Own Building
The Birthday Toast That Made Twenty People Laugh, and the One Secret I Had Kept for Nine Years
Part 3 of 20
