Chapter 1 - START PACKING
My mother slapped Ysella hard enough to turn her entire body.
I heard the sound from the hallway.
Then the crash.
“Ysella!”
I ran into her bedroom.
My daughter was on the carpet beside three cardboard boxes.
Four years old.
Simple blue party dress.
One flat shoe halfway off her heel.
Her stuffed rabbit trapped beneath one arm.
Her other hand covered her cheek.
Drusilla stood over her.
My mother looked perfectly composed.
Elegant blouse.
Bracelet.
Heels.
No panic.
No regret.
“What happened?”
Ysella saw me.
“Daddy.”
I crossed the room and dropped beside her.
“Did you hit your head?”
She shook it.
“Where does it hurt?”
She touched her cheek.
“Grandma hit.”
I looked up.
Drusilla folded her arms.
“She reached into a box after I told her not to.”
I stared.
A box.
In Ysella’s bedroom.
Then I finally noticed how many there were.
Against the wardrobe.
Beside the toy chest.
Three more stacked near the window.
Labels written in Drusilla’s handwriting.
WINTER CLOTHES.
BED LINENS.
JEWELRY BOOKS.
OFFICE.
My daughter’s dolls had been pushed onto the floor to make room.
Her small reading chair was gone.
“Why are your belongings in here?”
Drusilla smiled.
“I’m reorganizing.”
“This is Ysella’s room.”
“It is a bedroom in this house.”
“It is her bedroom.”
Ysella whispered:
“Daddy…”
I looked down.
“What?”
“Grandma took my room.”
My chest tightened.
“What did she tell you?”
Ysella clutched the rabbit.
“That my bed goes away.”
I looked at Drusilla.
“Is that true?”
“She has outgrown the arrangement.”
“She is four.”
“She can sleep somewhere else.”
“Where?”
Drusilla’s answer came without hesitation.
“He’s outgrown his room. Move him to the storage shed.”
The pronoun was wrong.
The cruelty was not.
“You want my four-year-old daughter sleeping in a storage shed?”
“It has electricity.”
I stood.
“Get out.”
Her smile vanished.
“Excuse me?”
“Get your things out of this room.”
“Gervase.”
“Now.”
“You are being dramatic.”
“You slapped my daughter.”
“She needed correction.”
“You knocked her onto the floor.”
“She is fine.”
Ysella started crying behind me.
I turned.
The red handprint on her cheek was becoming clearer.
Something inside me broke loose.
I stepped toward Drusilla.
My hand moved.
One slap.
Open palm.
Hard.
Her head snapped sideways.
She stumbled backward into the boxes.
Two collapsed.
Another tipped off the stack and burst open when she fell against the carpet.
Sweaters spilled everywhere.
Drusilla stared up at me.
The fury left me immediately.
Not the anger.
The physical impulse.
I knew what I had done.
She had not been attacking Ysella at that second.
I could have removed my daughter.
Called police.
Ordered Drusilla out.
Instead I hit her.
That consequence would belong to me.
Later.
Right now, Ysella needed me.
Drusilla pushed herself upright.
“You hit me.”
“Yes.”
“You’ll regret choosing that brat over me.”
I looked at her.
Then at the boxes.
I picked one up.
Carried it to the bedroom door.
Set it in the hallway.
“I already chose.”
Another box.
Hallway.
“Start packing.”
Her expression changed.
“You can’t throw me out.”
“This is my house.”
“Your house?”
She laughed once.
Not naturally.
Nervously.
That caught my attention.
“You think because Elowen’s name was on a deed—”
She stopped.
I stared at her.
My wife had been dead eighteen months.
Cancer.
Thirty-three years old.
No mystery.
No hidden crime.
Just a disease that took her faster than we were prepared to understand.
“What about Elowen’s deed?”
“Nothing.”
“You brought it up.”
“I said nothing.”
“You said her name was on a deed.”
Drusilla’s mouth tightened.
Interesting.
I had owned this house with Elowen.
Joint tenancy.
When she died, title passed to me.
Simple.
At least I thought it was simple.
Then I noticed one box near the wardrobe.
Not clothes.
Files.
A black accordion folder had fallen out.
I saw the corner of a document.
WREN HOUSE — VALUATION.
My house.
An appraisal.
I had not ordered one.
Drusilla moved toward it.
I stepped between us.
“What is that?”
“Business.”
“Why is my address on it?”
She reached.
I picked up the folder first.
Her face went white.
Not angry.
Afraid.
“Give that to me.”
“No.”
“Gervase.”
“Why did you have my house appraised?”
She looked toward Ysella.
Then back at me.
“You don’t understand how much this family has carried for you.”
There.
Family.
Again.
The word she had used while telling my daughter she barely belonged.
I took out my phone.
Called police.
Drusilla stared at me as if I had betrayed her.
Maybe in her mind I had.
For years, disagreement with my mother stayed inside the walls.
She treated privacy as loyalty.
Elowen never did.
That had been one of their biggest fights.
Now my daughter was sitting on the floor with a red cheek because I had allowed Drusilla to move into our home “temporarily” after Elowen died and then kept postponing the confrontation every time temporary grew larger.
I crouched beside Ysella.
“We’re leaving this room for a little while.”
“Is Grandma keeping it?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Yes.”
That promise I could keep.
As I carried her downstairs, she looked over my shoulder.
Drusilla stood in the bedroom doorway surrounded by her boxes.
For the first time, she looked less like a woman moving in.
May you like
More like a woman whose plan had been interrupted.
And I still did not know what my house had to do with it.
