Cheryl’s mistake wasn’t kicking me out. It was doing it before checking who actually owned the house.
When my father passed unexpectedly from a heart attack at fifty-three, I thought my world had ended. Then Cheryl informed me it was merely changing – specifically, changing to exclude me from the home I’d lived in since birth.
What she didn’t know? That eighteen months earlier, during what I’d thought was just another boring afternoon running errands with Dad, he’d quietly transferred the house into a trust with my name on it.
“Just signing some boring adult papers,” he’d said when I asked why we were at the lawyer’s office. I’d been too busy texting Katie to pay attention.
Fast forward to the day after my eviction, when Aunt Janine – a corporate attorney with a reputation for being utterly ruthless in court – showed up with documents proving the house had been mine all along.
The speed with which Cheryl’s smug superiority evaporated was almost comical. One minute she was lecturing me about “learning to stand on my own two feet,” the next she was being informed she had sixty minutes to vacate the premises.
As I watched her carry designer suitcases to a waiting taxi (the black SUVs were just for intimidation – Janine’s idea), I realized Dad had given me more than a house. He’d given me justice.
That night, I slept in my childhood bed for the first time since Dad died. The room still smelled faintly of his cologne from when he’d poke his head in to say goodnight. Outside, the old oak tree scraped against the window just like always.
Somewhere across town, Cheryl was probably seething in some hotel room. But here, in the home my father protected for me, everything was finally right again.
