I bought my parents a $650,000 cottage by the ocean for their 40th anniversary so they could finally rest. A few months later, my mother called me sobbing because my sister’s husband had changed the locks, put the house up for short-term rent, and told my father, “Get out. This isn’t your home.”

“This is far too much for you to give us,” he whispered while his hand rested on the paper as if it were a fragile bird.

“It is a house, Dad, and it belongs to you for as long as you both are on this earth,” I replied firmly.

Later that evening, Chadwick had asked about the tax implications and the maintenance costs with a hunger in his eyes that I found deeply unsettling.

“Everything is handled through a separate endowment I created,” I told him, and I watched him nod as if he were already calculating how to circumvent my rules.

For the first few months, the house was a source of pure joy as my parents learned the rhythms of the tide and the names of the local birds.

My father took up the hobby of watching the weather with an intensity that he used to reserve for his warehouse inventory.

However, the questions from Chadwick never truly stopped and eventually began to grow more aggressive as his own business ventures began to falter.

He started suggesting that my parents were being selfish by occupying such a valuable piece of real estate during the peak summer months.