“This can’t be happening. We’ve lived here for three years. This is my house.”
“It’s her house,” Daniel said in a dead voice.
“Then make her give it to you. She’s your mother.”
At that, something in Daniel snapped.
“Like we had an obligation to respect her?” he said, voice cracking. “Like we had an obligation not to leave her home while we drank three hundred dollars’ worth of wine? You sent that text, Emily. That damned text about heating up leftovers.”
Emily went pale.
“It wasn’t meant like that—”
“Was humiliating her funny to you?”
For the first time in three years, my son defended my honor.
Too late, but he finally did.
He called me once, twice, five times, ten times. He texted. Begged. Apologized. I did not answer. By then I was at Linda’s house wrapped in a clean blanket that smelled like fabric softener, drinking chamomile tea with honey and sleeping the deepest, safest sleep I had had in years.
The next morning I woke at seven to sunlight spilling through the window and the smell of coffee downstairs. No one was waiting to demand breakfast. No one would inspect a bathroom. No one would turn my labor into a silent tax.
I was free.