“Well,” he said slowly, “actually… my in-laws put the house in Lucy’s name before they passed away.”
Boom.
If I could’ve freeze-framed Tracy’s face and hung it in a museum, I would’ve. She went from smug to confused to pale in ten seconds.
“What do you mean,” she hissed into the phone, “they put it in her name? When were you going to tell me this?”
“I didn’t think it was that important,” Dad said lamely.
She hung up on him.
Just like that. Thumb stabbed the red button. Phone thunked onto the table.
She turned back to me, eyes wide, breathing shallow.
“This… this has to be some sort of mistake,” she sputtered. “They wouldn’t do that. Not without…”
She trailed off because even she knew how pathetic it sounded.
I folded my arms.
“No mistake,” I said. “They didn’t trust you. They trusted me. So, about that rent…”
I slept like a baby that night for the first time in years.
No, scratch that. I slept like a cat who’d just knocked something expensive off a shelf and sauntered away without looking back.
But if I’ve learned anything from living with Tracy, it’s that people like her don’t go quietly.
The next morning, I was on the landing outside my room when I heard her voice drifting up from the kitchen.
She was on the phone. Speaker. Of course.
“I’m telling you, Mark,” she said, her tone sharp and urgent, “you have to do something about this. Your daughter is being unreasonable. She’s tearing this family apart.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Tracy,” my dad’s voice replied, sounding worn. “The house is in her name. That’s… that’s the law.”
“You could at least talk to her about college,” Tracy said. “Remember those out-of-state schools she applied to? You could encourage her. Tell her it would be ‘good for her independence.’”
I leaned against the wall, blood turning to ice.
We’d had conversations about my college options months ago. I’d applied to a few state schools, some farther away, some nearby. We’d talked about me maybe moving out someday when I could afford it, when it made sense.
Apparently Tracy had her own schedule.
Mark hesitated.
“I don’t know…”
“Think about it,” she pressed, voice sliding into that false concern tone she used with customer service reps. “She’s clearly… unstable right now. All this anger she’s carrying? It’s unhealthy. A little time away could be good for her mental health.”
My mental health.