PART 3
My father executed the formal affidavit that very afternoon before an independent notary public. He officially affirmed under oath that he had knowingly and voluntarily transferred the property to me five years prior, without coercion or misunderstanding.
When he finished signing, he tucked his copy inside his coat.
“Laura…”
“Yes, Dad?”
“Is Sophia doing alright?”
“She’s safe,” I said quietly.
He nodded, looking like he wanted to say more, but he simply turned and walked away.
Three days later, my father packed his personal clothes and moved out of my mother’s apartment, taking up temporary residence at his brother’s house across town.
My mother called me that night, her voice shaking with unbridled fury. “You destroyed this family!”
“No, Mom. You did.”
“Your father walked out on me because of you!”
“Dad left because he finally decided to leave.”
“You brainwashed him with your lies!”
“I showed him official documents bearing his own signature.”
Then she said something I will never forget: “When you finally take this apartment—if you even can—you’re going to sit in those empty rooms all by yourself and realize you gained four walls and lost a mother.”
I looked over at Sophia, who was sleeping peacefully in our small rental room, one sock on and one kicked off under the blanket.
“Mom, the day you threw my daughter’s food in the trash, you decided what kind of mother and grandmother you wanted to be,” I said coldly. “I didn’t make that choice for you.”
I hung up.
The formal legal demand to surrender the premises was delivered by a court process server forty-eight hours later. My mother refused to sign it and refused to leave.
So, Adrian filed the civil unlawful detainer lawsuit.
It was not a swift, cinematic victory. Real legal battles rarely move like the movies. There were formal court filings, process servers, verified answers, motions, hearing dates that got rescheduled, legal fees, and agonizing weeks of waiting.
In the meantime, Sophia and I moved out of the boarding house and rented a small, modest one-bedroom apartment near her daycare. It wasn’t grand, but it was ours.
The very first night we moved in, Sophia ran back and forth across the small living room rug, giggling. “Mommy, nobody else uses our bathroom here!”
I laughed, wiping away a tear. “That’s right, sweetie. Nobody else.”
I took on additional freelance editing work, taking on late-night manuscripts to cover our expenses and my legal bills. For the first time in my adult life, I stopped financial disbursements to everyone in my family—except for continuing to cover my father’s heart medication.
Without my quiet financial subsidy, my family’s artificial lifestyle collapsed like a house of cards.
Karla missed her first mortgage payment. Then her second. By the third month, her lender issued a formal notice of default.
She called me one evening, sobbing into the receiver. “Laura, please! You have to reactivate the monthly transfer!”
“No, Karla.”
“They’re going to foreclose on my condo!”
“Then you need to speak with your loan officer.”
“I can’t afford the payment on my salary!”
“Then look for a second job or sell the place.”
Silence filled the line. “Just like that? You’re just going to let me lose everything?”
“That’s what you said to me when Mom threw Sophia’s soup out,” I reminded her flatly. “’The rest of us actually work.’”
“I was angry!” she cried.
“No, Karla. You were comfortable letting me pay your bills.”
Her boyfriend, who had believed for four years that Karla was paying her own mortgage independently, eventually discovered the truth when he asked why her credit was suddenly plummeting. He broke up with her two weeks later.
Karla showed up at my rented apartment one Saturday afternoon, her eyes red, wearing an oversized sweatshirt.
“Daniel left me,” she whispered.
I stood in the doorway. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You sent him those bank statements, didn’t you?”
“He asked me directly if it was true that I had been paying your mortgage for four years,” I stated calmly. “I sent him the itemized bank wire confirmations. Dates, amounts, reference numbers. Nothing more.”
She pushed past me into the small apartment, looking around at the folding table, the cardboard toy boxes, and the drying rack near the window. “You’re actually living like this?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were just exaggerating to punish Mom.”
That comment brought me more sorrow than anger. “You all really believed I had a hidden fortune somewhere, didn’t you? You couldn’t fathom that I was just working hard and giving my money away to people who despised me.”
