After A Major Storm Damaged My Home, My Daughter Said, “Just Stay In Your Car A Little Longer – I’m Busy.” So I Did. Now, Months Later, I Live In My Own Beautiful Home. When She And Her Husband Showed Up With Moving Boxes, Saying, “It’s Perfect For Our Nursery,”

A craftsman bungalow with a front porch and mature orange trees in the backyard. It needed work, the listing photos showed, but it was beautiful. It was home.

My phone buzzed. Another text from Jane. Haven’t heard from you in a few days.

Everything okay? I typed and deleted a dozen responses. Part of me wanted to share the news, to let her know her mother wasn’t as helpless as she’d assumed, but a larger part wanted to wait, to see what else might reveal itself in the coming days.

I’m fine, I finally typed back. Just figuring some things out. The next morning, I made the arrangements to fly to California.

The lawyer would meet me at the property, help me understand the full scope of what Tilly had left behind. I bought a plane ticket with money I’d been saving for a security deposit on an apartment. Money I’d been hoarding like a dragon guard’s gold.

As I packed my few belongings, everything I owned still fit in two grocery bags. I thought about the woman I’d been three months ago. The woman who’d lost everything to flood water and had accepted her daughter’s grudging charity because she’d believed she had no other choice.

That woman was gone. In her place was someone harder. Someone who’d learned that love could be conditional and family could be temporary.

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