My room was ajar. Daniel pushed the door open and turned on the light. The bed was made, but the closet was empty. No clothes. No shoes. No books on the nightstand. No glasses. No rosary. No toothbrush. Nothing.
It looked less like a room than an outline where a life had been erased.
“What the hell?” Emily whispered.
Then Daniel saw the letter on his pillow.
He grabbed it. Emily leaned over his shoulder while he unfolded it. Michael later told me he watched his father’s face change in seconds—confusion, disbelief, dread.
“What does it say?” Emily asked. “Did she leave? Did your mom leave?”
Daniel did not answer. He had already seen the manila envelope on the nightstand.
He opened it with shaking hands.
He read the deed.
“No,” he whispered. “No, no, no.”
Emily snatched the papers from him and scanned them once, then again.
“This can’t be real.”
“The house is in her name,” Daniel said hollowly. “The whole house. It always was.”
“But you told me—”
“She paid the down payment,” he said, sinking onto the bed. “She sold her house. The money was hers. I barely had anything.”
Emily looked at the yellow note.
$136,800 to be exact.
Her legs nearly gave out.
“Are you saying your mother invested over a hundred and thirty thousand dollars in this house and we never transferred anything?”
Daniel dragged a hand over his face.
“We never transferred it.”
The silence that followed sobered them faster than cold water.
Michael woke up from the shouting and came downstairs rubbing his eyes. Sarah woke next and started crying for me.
Emily paced like a trapped animal.
“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.