“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”
“What is it?”
Emily snatched the papers from him.
Her eyes scanned the document.
Once.
Twice.
And then she turned pale.
“This… this can’t be real.”
“The house is in her name,” Daniel said in a hollow voice. “The whole house. It was always in her name.”
“But… but you paid the down payment. You told me.”
“She paid the down payment.”
Daniel sat down heavily on the bed.
“She sold her house. $68,000. I didn’t have anything. It all came from her.”
Emily took the yellow sticky note that was attached to the deeds.
“$136,800 to be exact.”
“$136,000…”
Emily swayed.
“Are you telling me your mom invested over $100,000 in this house and we never did the transfer?”
“Oh my god, Emily. We never transferred the property.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Michael told me he woke up to the shouting.
He came downstairs rubbing his eyes and found his parents in the living room arguing.
While his mom was shouting, his dad had his head in his hands.
“This can’t be happening.”
Emily paced back and forth like a caged animal.
“We’ve lived here for three years. Three years. This is my house.”
“It’s her house,” Daniel said in a dead voice. “Legally, it was always her house.”
“Then you demand that she give it to you. She’s your mother. She has an obligation to—”
“Obligation?”
Daniel looked up.
His eyes were red.
“Like the obligation we had to treat her with respect? To not exclude her from dinner tonight?”
Emily was speechless.
“We left her alone,” Daniel continued, his voice cracking. “In her own house. We left her eating leftovers while we spent $300 on wine.”
“Daniel, you sent her that text.”
“That damn text about heating up the leftovers from the fridge.”
Emily’s mouth fell open.
She closed it.
She turned even paler.
“I… it wasn’t with bad intentions. It was just—”
“What a joke? Was humiliating her funny to you?”
For the first time in three years, my son defended my honor.
But it was too late.
Michael was crying on the stairs, listening to everything.
Sarah woke up and started calling for her grandma.
“Where’s Grandma? I want my Grandma.”
Daniel dialed my number once, twice, five, ten times.
I had silenced his contact.
He sent texts.
“Mom, please answer me.”
“Mom, I’m so sorry.”
