“Yes, it is,” I said, looking directly at the bold heading. It was an active purchase agreement. Not signed by me. Not authorized by me. But there it was—my family home being offered up as if it were a piece of used living room furniture. It featured photos of the yard, the kitchen, my parents’ old bedroom, and even the beautiful bougainvillea my mother had planted the year I turned fifteen.
I felt a wave of rage so pure it didn’t even hurt anymore.
“Were you actually going to sell it?” I asked. Chloe lifted her chin defensively. “Don’t overreact. We were just looking at our options.”
Mr. Rivas didn’t smile. “An option complete with a listed price, a requested down payment, and a tentative closing date.”
Paul slumped heavily into a dining chair. “Chloe…”
She whirled around to face him, her eyes flashing with pure fire. “Shut up! You’re the one who told me your cousin almost never comes down here. You’re the one who said this house was basically abandoned!”
“Abandoned doesn’t mean handed over for free,” I said.
Chloe stared at me as if she finally realized that I hadn’t come down here to have a polite argument. I had come to shut things down permanently.
The notary public adjusted his glasses. “Mrs. Chloe, Mr. Paul, let it be formally recorded that the lawful property owner is requesting the immediate return of the real estate, and that there is sufficient evidence of actions directly violating the loan-for-use agreement.”
“Agreement?” Chloe let out a sharp, nervous laugh. “Nobody ever mentioned any contract to me.”
Paul lowered his head. Right then, I knew that he had known all along. He had just stayed quiet for three long years. “I told you about it,” he muttered under his breath. “You told me it was just a legal formality!”
I felt a sudden urge to laugh out loud. A formality. That’s the word entitled people use for everything that reminds them the world doesn’t belong to them.
The front door was still wide open. Outside on the walkway, two neighbors were already lingering, pretending to water their porch plants. In a small town, a formal legal notice served right before Christmas is infinitely more entertaining than any holiday festival.
Chloe clenched her fists tightly. “Fine. If you want to play the proud homeowner, let’s play. But you can’t just kick us out into the street. We’ve been here for three years. We’ve invested real money. I painted the living room. I bought new curtains. I put up those Christmas lights. I remodeled the bathroom.”
Mr. Rivas pulled open another file in his folder. “All of those modifications were executed without written authorization from the owner. And according to section four of the signed agreement, any unauthorized improvements legally remain to the benefit of the property, with absolutely no right to financial reimbursement.”
Chloe went entirely silent. For the very first time. And what a beautiful, long-overdue silence it was.
Paul lifted his face to look at me. “Cousin, please. We can sort this out. We’re family.”
I stared at him. This was the exact same Paul who had wept tears of gratitude when I first handed him the keys. The same one who swore I was like a sister to him. The same one who sat back and allowed the portraits of my parents to be torn down, my deadbolts to be changed, and me to be assigned “the small guest room” inside the very house where I learned how to walk.
“No,” I told him flatly. “I tried handling this as family for three long years. Today, I am handling it strictly as the property owner.”
Chloe slammed her hand down hard onto the table. “This house belongs to Paul just as much as it does to you! His mother, Aunt Rose, told us you didn’t need any of this. You have a great job, you live in Dallas, you don’t even have any kids! What do you even want with an empty house anyway?!”
There it was. The exact phrase that always crawls out from underneath greedy family ambition. What do you even want it for.
As if not having children somehow made me less of a legitimate heir. As if having a career stripped away my right to hold onto what belonged to me. As if the lifetime of hard work my parents put in could just be carved up and distributed among the most shameless relatives.
“I want it because it belongs to me,” I responded coldly. “And because the memory of my dead parents is not a spare room available for your personal comfort.”
Paul buried his face in his hands. Chloe let out a scoff of pure contempt. “You’re being so incredibly dramatic. Your parents aren’t even here anymore.”
