The Garden I Built: A Story of Hard Work and Betrayal

They say blood is thicker than water, that family will always have your back no matter what. I used to believe that too. I believed it right up until the moment my own family sat around my parents’ dinner table and calmly discussed how they would take everything I’d worked for. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning, back when my hands were small and always covered in dirt, and the only thing I cared about was making things grow.

My name is Aurora, and I’m thirty-four years old. I’m just a regular woman who loves getting her hands dirty in the soil. I’ve been obsessed with gardening since I was a little kid—like, really obsessed. While other girls my age were playing with dolls and having tea parties with their stuffed animals, I was outside digging holes in my mom’s backyard, trying to plant everything I could get my hands on. Acorns from the oak tree, seeds from apples I’d eaten, even dandelions I’d pull up from one spot just to replant somewhere else. My mom would come outside and find me covered head to toe in mud, my fingernails black with soil, grinning like I’d just discovered buried treasure.

My parents thought it was just a phase, something I’d grow out of once I discovered boys or fashion or whatever it was they expected me to be interested in. But it never went away. That love of watching things grow, of creating something beautiful with my own two hands—it only got stronger as I got older. By the time I was in middle school, I was reading gardening books instead of teen magazines. I spent my allowance on seed packets and small plants from the hardware store. I transformed our entire backyard into different sections—a vegetable patch here, a flower bed there, a little herb garden near the kitchen door.

When I turned eighteen, I knew exactly what I wanted to study. There was no question in my mind, no moment of doubt or indecision. I was going to college for landscaping and horticulture. I filled out all the applications myself, researched the best programs, and got accepted to a decent state school with a solid agriculture department.

My parents weren’t thrilled about it, to put it mildly. I remember sitting at the kitchen table—that same kitchen table where everything would eventually fall apart—and telling them about my acceptance letter. My mom’s face fell. My dad looked confused, like I’d just told him I wanted to join the circus.

“Landscaping?” my mom said, saying the word like it tasted bad. “Aurora, are you sure? That’s such hard work. It’s dirty work.”

“I like dirt, Mom. You know that.”

“But sweetheart,” she continued, leaning forward with that concerned expression she wore when she was trying to change my mind about something, “don’t you want to be a teacher? Or a nurse? Those are good, stable careers for women. You’d have benefits, a steady paycheck, respect.”

My dad nodded along. “Your mother’s right. This landscaping thing—that’s manual labor. That’s for men who don’t have other options. You’re smart, Aurora. You got good grades. You could do something better.”

But I stuck with it. I didn’t care what they thought was appropriate for me. I loved every single class, even the boring ones about soil composition and plant diseases that made half my classmates fall asleep. I took notes in all my classes, asked questions, stayed after to talk with professors. I interned with local landscaping companies during the summers, working long hours in the heat for barely any pay, just to learn everything I could.

After graduation, I worked for other landscaping companies for a few years. I learned a lot during that time—how to manage client relationships, how to estimate jobs, which suppliers were reliable, all the practical business stuff they don’t really teach you in school. But I always felt like I could do things better. My bosses were nice enough people, but they didn’t have the same passion I had. They’d rush through jobs just to move on to the next one, use inexpensive plants that wouldn’t last more than a season or two, cut corners wherever they could to maximize profit. It drove me absolutely crazy.

I’d spend my lunch breaks sketching out better designs for the projects we were working on, suggesting different plant combinations that would look better and last longer. Sometimes my bosses would listen, but most of the time they’d pat me on the head—literally, sometimes—and tell me I was thinking too much about it. “It’s just a job, Aurora,” one of them told me. “These people don’t care about the difference between one flower and another. They just want their yard to look nice for their summer barbecue.”

But I cared. I cared a lot.

When I turned twenty-five, I decided to take the plunge. I used every penny of my savings—about eight thousand dollars I’d carefully accumulated over the years—to start my own landscaping company right here in the U.S. I registered the business, got insurance, bought some basic equipment, had business cards printed up. It was terrifying. I had no idea if anyone would hire me, especially since I was young and a woman in a business absolutely dominated by older men. I’d show up to give estimates and watch potential clients’ faces when they realized the owner was this skinny woman in her mid-twenties, not the burly guy they were expecting. But I figured I had nothing to lose. If it didn’t work out, I could always go back to working for someone else.

The first year was absolutely brutal. I barely made enough money to pay for gas and basic supplies. I did everything myself—marketing, bookkeeping, all the physical labor. There was no money to hire help, so I was the boss, the accountant, the marketer, and the entire workforce all rolled into one exhausted person. My hands were constantly covered in cuts and calluses. I’d wake up at five in the morning and work until dark, seven days a week. I took jobs other companies didn’t want—the ones that were too small, too difficult, or too far away. I didn’t care. Every job was a chance to prove myself, to build my reputation, to make a little more money.

There were nights I cried myself to sleep, my whole body aching, wondering if I’d made a huge mistake. My parents certainly thought so. “You could still go back to school,” my mom would say whenever I visited. “Get a teaching certificate. It’s not too late.” But I was stubborn. I wasn’t going to quit.

Slowly, painfully slowly, things started to turn around. My first few customers were really happy with my work, and they started recommending me to their friends and neighbors. Word of mouth is everything in this business. I wasn’t the cheapest option—in fact, I was often more expensive than my competitors—but I did quality work, and I actually listened to what people wanted instead of just doing whatever was easiest for me. I’d sit with clients for an hour or more, asking about their lifestyle, their aesthetic preferences, how they used their outdoor space. Then I’d come back with designs that were tailored specifically to them, not just cookie-cutter templates.

By the time I was twenty-eight, my business was doing well enough that I could afford to hire a part-time assistant. His name was Joel, a retired guy who liked working outdoors and didn’t mind taking orders from someone young enough to be his daughter. Having help was life-changing. Suddenly I could take on bigger projects, work more efficiently, and—miracle of miracles—occasionally take a day off. I was making decent money, and for the first time in my adult life, I felt stable. That’s when I started thinking about buying a house.

I’d been renting a tiny apartment since college—a cramped one-bedroom with thin walls and a landlord who took weeks to fix anything—and I was sick of it. I wanted my own space, my own garden where I could experiment with different plants and designs, a place where I could paint the walls whatever color I wanted and hang pictures without worrying about losing my security deposit.

I spent months looking at houses, scrolling through real estate websites every night, attending open houses on weekends. But everything decent was way out of my budget. Real estate prices were absolutely wild, and I was just one person with a small business income. Lenders looked at my tax returns with skepticism. “Self-employed income is harder to verify,” they told me. “We’ll need two years of documentation.” I had that, but it didn’t seem to matter. The houses I could afford were either in terrible neighborhoods or falling apart. The houses I actually wanted were firmly in the “dream on” category.

Finally, after almost a year of searching, I found it: a small house on the edge of town with a decent-sized backyard. The house itself needed some work—the bathroom tile was cracked, the kitchen appliances were ancient, and there was a weird stain on the living room carpet that I tried not to think too hard about—but the bones were good, and the garden had so much potential. The previous owners had clearly let everything go to ruin. There were weeds everywhere, dead shrubs that should have been pulled out years ago, and a lawn that looked like a dirt patch with a few ambitious clumps of crabgrass. But I could see what it could become. I walked through that neglected yard and saw flower beds and vegetable gardens and a little pond with fish. I saw morning coffee on a patio surrounded by fragrant herbs. I saw years of happiness.

The mortgage payment was going to be tight—really tight—but I figured I could make it work if I kept growing my business. I put in an offer, held my breath for three agonizing days, and then got the call that they’d accepted it. I literally jumped up and down in my apartment like a little kid, probably annoying my downstairs neighbor, but I didn’t care. I was going to be a homeowner.

Moving day was one of the happiest days of my life. It wasn’t much—just a two-bedroom house with one bathroom and a kitchen that hadn’t been updated since the eighties—but it was mine. Well, mine and the bank’s, but still. For the first time in my life, I had a place that truly belonged to me, where no landlord could tell me what to do or raise my rent on a whim.

I immediately started working on the garden. Every spare minute I had, I was out there pulling weeds, amending the soil, planning where everything would go. I’d work all day on client jobs, then come home and work on my own yard until I couldn’t see anymore, using my phone’s flashlight to pull just a few more weeds or plant just one more flower. Neighbors probably thought I was crazy. The transformation was incredible, though. Within six months, people driving by would slow down to look at my yard. Within a year, strangers were knocking on my door asking for the name of my landscaper. “I am my landscaper,” I’d say proudly.

Within two years, I turned that dead patch of land into something truly beautiful. I had different sections: a vegetable garden with tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini; a flower garden with plants that bloomed at different times so there was always color throughout the growing season; a little herb section near the kitchen window where I could reach out and snip fresh basil or rosemary; even a small pond with koi fish that I’d stare at for hours when I needed to relax. It was my sanctuary, my masterpiece, proof that I knew what I was doing.

One day, I was flipping through a gardening magazine during my lunch break and saw they were having a contest for small landscape design. Categories included best urban garden, best sustainable design, and best overall small residential landscape. On a whim, I grabbed my camera and spent an entire Saturday afternoon taking photos of my garden from every angle. I captured the morning light filtering through the Japanese maple, the way the purple coneflowers attracted butterflies, the reflection of clouds in my little pond. I submitted the photos along with a brief description of my design process. Then I completely forgot about it.

Three months later—I was elbow-deep in mulch at a client’s house—my phone rang. Unknown number. I almost didn’t answer, figuring it was spam, but something made me pick up.

“Is this Aurora?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Yes, this is she.”

“Hi Aurora, I’m calling from Garden & Landscape Magazine. I wanted to personally let you know that you’ve won first place in our small landscape design category.”

I screamed. Right there in my client’s yard, I screamed so loud that the homeowner came running out thinking I’d hurt myself. The magazine wanted to feature my garden in their next issue and interview me about my design process. They’d send a professional photographer, feature my business information, everything. I couldn’t believe it. My little garden, the one I’d built with my own hands in my spare time, was going to be in a real magazine that people all over the country would see.

The day the magazine came out, I bought five copies. I showed everyone—my clients, my assistant Joel, random people at the grocery store. My parents even seemed impressed, in their way. “That’s nice, honey,” my mom said, flipping through the pages. “Your garden does look pretty.”

But even with this success, even with my business growing and money coming in more reliably, I never lost sight of my main goal: paying off that mortgage as quickly as possible. I’d read somewhere that every extra dollar you put toward your principal saves you exponentially more in interest over the life of the loan. So every extra dollar I made went straight to the mortgage. I didn’t take vacations, didn’t buy new clothes unless I absolutely had to. I drove the same beat-up truck I’d had since college—a 2004 Ford with a broken air conditioner and a passenger door that stuck. My friends thought I was extreme, maybe even a little crazy, for living so cheaply when my business was doing well. They’d invite me on weekend trips or out to fancy restaurants, and I’d decline, making up excuses so I didn’t have to explain that I was eating ramen noodles at home so I could put an extra two hundred dollars toward my house payment.

“You’re so young, Aurora,” my friend Jennifer told me once. “You should be enjoying life, not living like a monk.”

But I had a plan. I knew exactly what I was doing and why. I worked sixty-hour weeks, took on every job I could physically handle, and put every spare penny toward that mortgage. Some months I could only afford an extra fifty dollars. Other months, when I’d completed a big project, I could put down a thousand or more. I tracked it all in a spreadsheet, watching that principal balance slowly, stubbornly decrease.

It wasn’t easy. There were times I felt like I was missing out on life, watching my friends go on trips to Mexico and Hawaii, buy nice cars and designer handbags, while I patched holes in my work clothes and calculated whether I could afford to replace my worn-out work boots or if they had another few months in them. But every time I got discouraged, I’d walk through my garden and remember why I was doing this. This was my dream, my future, my security. No landlord could ever kick me out. No one could raise my rent. This was mine, or would be completely mine soon.

Now, at thirty-four, I was finally here. I’d made my final mortgage payment two weeks ago. Signed the papers, got the official letter from the bank. The house was mine completely and totally. No bank owned any piece of it anymore. The feeling was indescribable—like I’d climbed a mountain and finally reached the summit. Nine years of sacrifice, of hard work, of saying no to almost everything fun or spontaneous, and I’d done it. I’d paid off my house a full twenty-one years ahead of schedule.

It was the most amazing feeling in the world. I knew I had to celebrate this milestone with my family.

My older brother Marcus was thirty-seven and had been married to Sarah for ten years now. They had two kids—Jake, who was eleven, and Tommy, who was seven. They lived in a cramped rental apartment in a less-nice part of town and were always struggling with money. Marcus worked in retail management, making okay but not great money, and Sarah had stopped working after Tommy was born, so they were living on one income with two kids. It was tight, and Sarah complained about it constantly.

For the past three years, I’d been helping them out by paying their rent. It started during a particularly rough patch when Marcus had been between jobs for a few months. They were about to be evicted, and I couldn’t stand the thought of my nephews being homeless, so I stepped in. What was supposed to be temporary help for a few months turned into three years of me covering their rent every single month. Fifteen hundred dollars, like clockwork. That was money I could have been putting toward my mortgage, toward my retirement, toward anything else. But they were family, and you help family. That’s what I’d been taught.

On my rare days off, I’d often have Jake and Tommy over at my place. They were good kids, mostly. A little wild, a little careless in the way kids that age are, but sweet. They loved playing in my garden, even though they were more trouble than help sometimes. Tommy once pulled up an entire row of seedlings because he thought they were weeds. Jake had accidentally broken a ceramic pot I’d spent fifty dollars on. But they were kids. You couldn’t really be mad at them for being kids.

What did bother me, though, was Sarah’s behavior during drop-offs and pick-ups. She’d never just drop the boys off and leave. She’d come inside, wander through my house, touching things, commenting on everything. “Must be nice to have all this space,” she’d say, running her hand along my kitchen counter. “Our kitchen is so small I can barely turn around. The boys could really use a yard like this to run around in instead of being cooped up in our tiny apartment.” I’d smile politely and change the subject, but her comments always stuck with me. There was something pointed about them, something that felt less like idle observation and more like accusation. Like my having space was somehow taking something away from her.

A week after I made my final mortgage payment, I decided it was time to celebrate. I wanted to share this achievement with my family, to have them be happy for me, to feel like all those years of sacrifice had been worth it. I bought an expensive chocolate cake from the fancy bakery downtown—not the grocery store kind, but the real deal with layers of mousse and ganache—and a good bottle of wine. Not the seven-dollar stuff I usually bought for myself, but an actual nice bottle that the liquor store employee recommended.

Saturday evening was perfect timing since my parents always had Marcus and his family over for dinner on Saturdays. It was tradition. I could announce my news to everyone at once, maybe make a little toast, feel proud of what I’d accomplished.

When I walked into my parents’ house—carrying the cake box and wine bottle—the first thing I noticed was that American flag magnet still stuck to the fridge, exactly where it had been since I was a teenager. Some things never changed. Jake and Tommy were already sprawled on the living room floor, controllers in hand, playing some violent video game that seemed inappropriate for their ages but wasn’t my business.

“Aunt Aurora!” Tommy shouted, barely glancing up from the TV.

I put the cake and wine on the dining table, feeling a flutter of excitement in my chest. My mom was in the kitchen stirring something on the stove.

“What’s the treat for?” she asked, eyeing the expensive bakery box.

“I have a surprise for everyone,” I said, trying to keep the pride out of my voice and failing. “Some really good news.”

My mom waved her hand dismissively. “Everyone needs to eat first. You know how your father gets if dinner’s late.”

We sat down to dinner—pot roast with potatoes and carrots, my mom’s standard Saturday meal. Throughout the entire thing, Sarah monopolized the conversation, complaining about their landlord raising the rent again, about how cramped their apartment was, about how Jake and Tommy were getting bigger and needed more space. How it wasn’t fair that they had to live like this. My parents nodded along sympathetically, making appropriate sounds of concern. My dad even said something about how landlords were all greedy, how it was getting impossible for working families to get by.

I waited for a break in the conversation, but Sarah just kept going, her voice getting more and more agitated. Finally, when she paused to take a bite of pot roast, I jumped in.

“So my news is that I finally paid off the mortgage on my house,” I said, probably louder than necessary. “It’s completely mine now. Fully paid off. Nine years ahead of schedule.”

The entire table went dead silent. You could hear everything—the tick of the kitchen clock, the kids’ video game beeping in the living room, the sound of someone’s fork scraping against a plate. But nobody at the table said a word for what felt like forever. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. The silence stretched out uncomfortably.

My mom was the first to speak. “Oh. Well, that’s… that’s nice, honey.” But her voice sounded completely flat, like she was reading ingredients off a cereal box. There was no excitement, no congratulations, no “we’re so proud of you.” Just… nothing.

Marcus just grunted and kept eating, not even looking up from his plate.

Sarah’s face went through about ten different expressions in five seconds—first surprise, her eyebrows shooting up; then something that might have been anger, her jaw tightening; then this practiced, fake cheer; then back to anger. Her emotions were playing out across her features like a movie.

“Well, congratulations,” Sarah finally said, but the word dripped with something that definitely wasn’t happiness. “But honestly, Aurora, it doesn’t really seem fair, does it? You don’t have a husband and children like we do. You’re lucky you could focus on buying your own house and paying it off while we’re stuck in a rental apartment with two growing boys who need space.”

I felt my stomach clench. “Actually, I wasn’t lucky at all, Sarah. I worked incredibly hard to build my company from nothing, buy this house, and pay off the mortgage. I sacrificed everything for nine years. I didn’t go on vacations, I didn’t buy new things, I—”

Sarah suddenly set her fork down with a loud clang that made everyone jump. “We’re family, Aurora. And that means your house is family property. Marcus and I can claim that house. We need it more than you do.”

I stared at her, certain I’d misheard. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Your house,” she repeated slowly, like I was stupid. “It should belong to the family. To us. We’re your brother’s family.”

“It’s my personal property,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm even though my heart was racing. “I bought it with my own money. I paid for it myself. No one else has any claim to my house.”

But Sarah wouldn’t let up. Her eyes were getting shiny with tears—real or fake, I couldn’t tell. She turned to Marcus with this pathetic, helpless expression. “Honey, tell her. Tell your sister that she’s being selfish. We need to think about our children. Jake and Tommy need to grow up in a real house with a yard, not in that cramped apartment. They deserve better.”

Marcus nodded slowly, actually agreeing with her. “She has a point, Aurora. The boys are getting bigger. They need more space.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My own brother, who I’d been financially supporting for three years, was sitting there nodding along while his wife tried to claim my house. I turned to my parents, expecting them to shut this down immediately, to tell Sarah she was being ridiculous, to defend me. They’d do that, right? They were my parents.

But my dad spoke up first. “Sarah’s right, honey. They need the house more than you do.”

My mom nodded in agreement, her face serious. “You have to think about the children, Aurora. Jake and Tommy. They’re your nephews.”

I laughed—actually laughed—because it was so absurd. “Where exactly do you think I should live?”

“We’ll move into your house,” Sarah said matter-of-factly, like she was explaining something obvious to a child. “And you can rent an apartment or something. It’s not that hard.”

Marcus jumped in, warming to the idea. “You earn good money, Aurora. You have a solid, stable income. You’ll be able to afford rent easily, and probably save up to buy a new house quickly. You did it once, you can do it again.”

Then the most surreal thing happened. The three of them—Marcus, Sarah, and my parents—started talking among themselves like I wasn’t even there. Like I was invisible. They began discussing, in detail, how wonderful it would be when Marcus and his family moved into my house. My house. The one I’d spent nine years paying for.

“The living room is so much bigger than what we have now,” Sarah said, her voice bright with excitement, those fake tears completely gone. “We could finally get that sectional sofa I’ve been wanting.”

“And that garden Aurora built,” my mom added, smiling. “The kids would absolutely love it. They could play outside every day.”

“Which room do you think should be Jake’s?” Sarah asked Marcus. “The bigger bedroom or the one with the better closet?”

My dad chimed in. “The bigger one should go to the boys to share. They need space to grow.”

I sat there frozen, listening to them plan out their takeover of my life, my home, everything I’d worked for. They were dividing up my house like I’d died and they were reading my will. They were choosing bedrooms, discussing furniture placement, talking about paint colors. I couldn’t take another second of it.

I brought my hand down on the table hard enough that the plates jumped and water sloshed out of glasses.

“I am not giving my house to anyone.”

Everyone stopped talking and stared at me.

I stood up, my chair scraping harshly against the floor. “It’s my property. My hard work. My sacrifice. This has nothing to do with any of you.”

They were all staring at me like I was the unreasonable one—like I was the crazy person for not wanting to hand over my home. I grabbed my purse from where I’d hung it on the back of my chair and snatched up the wine bottle I’d brought.

“I can’t believe you,” I said, looking at each of them in turn. “I actually can’t believe this is happening.”

“Aurora, sit down,” my dad said in that stern voice he used when I was a teenager and had broken curfew. “We’re just trying to do what’s best for the family. For everyone.”

“What’s best for the family? What about what’s best for me? What about the fact that I worked myself to the bone for nine years to pay off that house? That I gave up everything?”

Sarah was crying again—or pretending to. “Think about Jake and Tommy. They’re your nephews. Don’t you love them? Don’t you want them to have a good life?”

“I’ve been thinking about them for three years while I paid your rent,” I shot back. “Eighteen hundred dollars a month. Do the math on that.”

I headed for the door, but I could hear them continuing their conversation behind me like nothing had happened, like I hadn’t just told them no.

“She’ll come around,” I heard my mom say in that confident tone she used. “She just needs time to think about it. To see reason.”

“The house really would be perfect for us,” Sarah said, her tears magically gone again. “And it’s not like Aurora needs all that space for just herself.”

I walked out and closed the door behind me, maybe harder than necessary. As I got in my car, my hands were shaking—from anger, from disbelief, from the sheer audacity of what had just happened. These people, my own family, the people who were supposed to love me and support me, had just tried to take my house from me. They’d turned what should have been the happiest announcement of my life into an absolute nightmare.

The drive home felt like a blur. I kept replaying the conversation in my head, trying to figure out how it had gone so wrong so fast. How could my own parents think it was okay for me to just hand over my house? The house I’d bought with my own money, paid for with my own labor? How could Marcus sit there and nod along while his wife made demands about my property? Had they planned this? Had they talked about it before I got there?

As soon as I got home and walked through my front door—my front door, to my house—my phone started buzzing non-stop. Call after call from my family. I looked at the screen each time it lit up and ignored every single one. Then the text messages started flooding in, one after another, making my phone vibrate continuously in my hand. I didn’t want to read them. I knew they’d just make me angrier. But I couldn’t help checking when I finally sat down on my couch—my couch, in my living room.

From my mom: “Aurora, you’re being very selfish. Family comes first. You know that. Call me back so we can discuss this reasonably.”

From my dad: “Your mother is upset. You need to apologize and do the right thing. Think about your nephews.”

From Marcus: “Stop acting like a child. We need to talk about this like adults. Call me.”

From Sarah: “I can’t believe you would put your own selfish wants above your nephews’ needs. What kind of aunt are you? Shame on you.”

I deleted every message without responding. Then I blocked all their numbers. I thought surely, after a few days of cooling off, they’d realize how unreasonable they were being and apologize. They’d see how crazy it was to expect me to just give away my house. But I was wrong. So wrong.

For two weeks, even with their numbers blocked, I could see the attempted calls coming through. The voicemails piled up. I could see them in my phone log, these ghosts of attempted communication. Each one made me angrier than the last. Not once did any of them apologize. Not once did anyone say, “You know what, we were out of line.” Instead, every message was about how I was wrong, how I was selfish, how I needed to think about family.

The odd part was, for the first time in years, I had a completely peaceful weekend. Sarah didn’t bring Jake and Tommy over like she usually did every Saturday. She didn’t call to ask if I could watch them or to arrange a drop-off time. Honestly, I was relieved. I could finally relax in my own house without worrying about kids tracking mud through my clean floors or accidentally breaking something or needing to be entertained. I spent the weekend working in my garden, reading a book in the sunshine, actually enjoying the space I’d worked so hard for.

But my peace didn’t last long.

On Tuesday afternoon, I was in my office going over estimates for upcoming jobs. I had a big commercial project proposal due by the end of the week, and I was trying to calculate material costs when my secretary, Linda, knocked on my door.

“Aurora, your mother is here to see you.”

My heart sank. I should have known she wouldn’t give up that easily. My mother was nothing if not persistent. “Send her in, I guess.”

My mom walked into my office wearing her sweetest smile—the one she used when she wanted something. The same smile she’d used to convince me to babysit Marcus when I was a teenager, or to lend Marcus money when he was in college, or to do any number of things I hadn’t really wanted to do. She sat down in the chair across from my desk and folded her hands primly in her lap.

“I wanted to talk to you about the house situation,” she began, her voice gentle and reasonable. “I think you’re being a little hasty in your decision.”

“Hasty?” I set down my pen and looked at her directly. “Mom, it’s my house. I bought it. I paid for it. I live in it. There’s no decision to make.”

“But Aurora,” she continued, still using that soft, reasonable tone, “think about Marcus and Sarah. They really need this. You’ve been so successful with your business.” She gestured around my modest office—really just a converted garage with a desk and filing cabinets. “Look at all this. You own your own company. You could easily afford to buy another house. They can’t.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “Do you have any idea how hard I worked for this? I didn’t go on vacation for nine years. Not once. I drove the same beat-up truck for over a decade. I wore the same old work clothes until they literally fell apart. I ate ramen noodles for dinner four nights a week so I could put every penny toward that mortgage.”

“I know, sweetheart, and we’re very proud of you—”

“Really? Because you didn’t sound proud at dinner. You sounded like you thought I should give it all away.”

My mom’s face took on that stubborn look I remembered from childhood, the one that meant she wasn’t going to back down. “Aurora, you’re being selfish. That’s not how we raised you. Family should help family. You should be generous with what you’ve achieved because you’re in a much better position than Marcus and Sarah. They have children to think about.”

“And what about me?” I could feel my voice rising. “What about what I want? What about the fact that I love my house and my garden? What about the fact that I’ve already been helping them for three years by paying their rent?”

“That’s exactly my point,” she said, leaning forward. “You’ve been helping them with rent. So why not just let them have the house? It’s essentially the same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing at all! One is temporary help and the other is giving away my entire life!”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“Mom, I need you to leave.” I stood up and walked to my office door, holding it open. “This is my workplace. You can’t come here and harass me about this.”

She gathered her purse and stood up slowly, her face flushed with anger. “You’re making a big mistake, young lady. This family won’t forget how you’ve acted. When you’re old and alone, don’t come crying to us.”

“Good. Maybe then you’ll leave me alone about my house.”

She left, and I could hear her heels clicking down the hallway, each step sharp and angry. I closed the door and leaned against it, trying to calm my racing heart.