Chapter 1 - The Foreclosure
The drive home from my parents' house was suffocatingly quiet.
Emma rested her head against the cold passenger window.
Noah stared straight ahead in the rearview mirror, his small hands still tucked deep inside his sleeves.
I kept both hands tightly gripped on the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white under the streetlights.
When we finally reached our driveway, I kept my promise and made them a massive stack of midnight pancakes.
We sat on the kitchen floor in our pajamas, eating syrup-drenched food while the rest of the world celebrated the new year.
I did not shed a single tear in front of my children.
Once they were safely asleep in their beds, I walked into my home office and looked at the clock.
It was exactly five in the morning.
For the past three years, my mother and my brother Brent had treated me like an invisible ATM.
They had completely forgotten that my name was the only one listed on the deed to the beautiful colonial house they lived in.
I had paid their mortgage every single month while they used their own money to spoil Brent's children.
At precisely six in the morning, my attorney's private courier knocked on my mother's heavy oak front door.
I knew my mother would answer it, wearing her expensive silk robe, expecting a misdirected holiday gift.
Instead, the courier handed her a manila envelope containing a final eviction notice and an immediate property seizure order.
I had quietly sold the house to a ruthless commercial development firm three days ago.
My phone suddenly buzzed on the desk, shattering the early morning silence.
I answered the call, expecting my mother to be screaming in hysterical tears.
Instead, it was my brother Brent, and he was laughing uncontrollably into the receiver.
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He told me he had intercepted the courier, and the eviction notice was completely useless.
He proudly announced that my mother had forged my signature on a transfer deed six months ago, and the house legally belonged to him.
