Homebody by Orson Scott Card

but so’s mine, and this is my house and I’m going to . . .”
    Going to what? What could he tell her? I’m going to hang out here alone and wallow in self-pity while you go out and live on the street again without a roof over your head because I can’t find room in a mansion this size to . . .
    “What is this, anyway? Is every woman in the world determined to stop me from . . .” And then he realized that he wasn’t arguing with her, or even with his ex-wife. He was arguing with himself. And he’d already lost. He couldn’t bear the idea of letting someone share a space with him like this, but at the same time he couldn’t bear the idea of throwing her out on the street. Certainly not tonight. What was it, two, three A.M. ? He was tired, he just wanted to go back to bed.
    “Listen, you can stay tonight. OK? One night. Got that? Say it after me. One—”
    She took two steps toward him—all the bathtub would allow—and spoke angrily right in his face. “Don’t talk to me like that!”
    “Like what?”
    “Like I was your daughter!”
    The words stung him. His daughter, his littlegirl. She would never have grown up to be someone like this, homeless, derelict, squatting in someone’s filthy bathtub. He would have raised her to be strong and free and able to stand on her own two feet.
    But maybe she got taken away from her father. Maybe she got taken away and raised by an incompetent, negligent . . .
    No. He would not let her become his daughter in some dark place in his psyche. “If you don’t like the way I talk to you, you’re free to leave.”
    “Talk however you like then.” The implication, from her words and from her defiant manner, was that she wasn’t going, no matter what. And at whatever ungodly hour of the morning this was, Don wasn’t going to ruin his own night by trying to throw her out. Either he’d have to use force, which he hated and which could lead to complications, or he’d have to leave the house to go get help from the police, and that would be even more galling, for her to stay and him to leave, however briefly.
    “You can stay the rest of the night,” Don said. “In the morning, get out. And make sure you don’t touch any of my tools. If anything’s missing, I’ll call the cops and you’ll have a new home in jail. Got it?”
    His tough talking didn’t impress her any more than it did him.
    “You want me to say it after you?” she asked.
    “This is where I live and work now,” he said. “And I live and work alone.”
    That was the simple truth, and she seemed to realize that this wasn’t bluster or anger or fear or waking up in the middle of the night. This was how he felt in his heart. There was no room for anyone in his life, and his house was his life, and that was that. She seemed to realize he meant it, because she said nothing.
    But she didn’t agree, either. He’d have this quarrel all over again in the morning, if she didn’t kill him with a two-by-four while he slept. And if he never woke up, well, then the house would be big enough for the two of them.
    Yet as he left the bathroom, her continued sullen silence infuriated him until he had to call out to her as he stalked down the hall, “You want to live in a rundown old house, you do like I did, start with a small one! Find yourself a rundown abandoned mobile home somewhere!”
    That got a rise out of her. He was halfway down the stairs but he could hear her piercing angry voice just fine, despite the echoey quality from the bathroom. Was she still standing in the tub? “Would you be happy if I found an abandoned rundown cardboard box?”
    He thought of answering, How about an old truck tire? but then he thought better of it. He was arguing with her like a schoolyard kid. Like siblings, waiting for Mom or Dad to come in and stop them. It put them on the same level, and they were not on the same level. He was a property owner, for heaven’s sake, and not by inheritance or dumbluck, either, he