I finally bought my dream house and invited my family to come see it. No one showed up. Later that night, my dad texted, “We need to talk about the house.” By then, something inside me had already shifted.

The notebook was spiral-bound, bent at one corner, with a faded sticker of a moon on the cover. Inside were page after page of the same house. Crayon, then marker, then pencil as I got older. Sometimes the fence changed style. Sometimes the porch swing disappeared and returned. Sometimes the oak tree was too large for the paper. Sometimes there were flowers. In one version there was a dog. In another, a girl standing in the doorway holding a key taller than her arm.

On the last page, drawn when I must have been maybe eleven or twelve, there was writing under the picture in my own uneven hand: This house will be mine and no one can tell me I take up too much room in it.

I sat on the floor of my office with that notebook in my lap and read the line three times.