**Part 2: The Letter on Their Door**
For the next two weeks, Mark, Abby, and I lived inside a strange pocket of calm. We had our own Christmas at home with Chinese takeout, old movies, and no obligation to pretend everything was fine, while my mother and sister filled my phone with cheerful messages asking when we planned to come over.
I deleted every voicemail without answering. During those same two weeks, I met with my attorney and explained exactly what had happened on Christmas Eve, along with one detail my parents had apparently forgotten.
The house they lived in belonged to me.
Seven years earlier, my father’s bad investments had left my parents facing foreclosure. I bought another house for them, kept the property and mortgage entirely in my name, and paid the taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance while they contributed nothing toward ownership.
There was no lease. Legally, they were tenants at will.
My attorney prepared formal notice requiring them to vacate within sixty days. Instead of delivering it myself and giving my mother another opportunity to manipulate the conversation, I had a process server take the papers directly to their door and obtain a signature.
Three hours later, my phone began ringing.
I ignored the first five calls. On the sixth, I answered and immediately had to pull the phone away from my ear.
“How dare you do this to us! After everything we’ve done for you, you’re throwing your own parents into the street?”
My father was shouting loudly in the background.
“If you go through with this, you are no daughter of ours! We are finished!”
I waited until they finally paused.
“The notice is legal. You have sixty days.”
My mother demanded an explanation, but what struck me most was what she did not say. She never asked why I was angry, never asked what had happened on Christmas Eve, and never mentioned Abby once.
Their only concern was losing the house.
THE END
