Chapter 5 - What It Cost, and What I Kept
My father looked like he'd been slapped. My mother started crying, loud and performative, begging the officers to see reason. The officers just stood their ground, arms crossed, watching over the whole scene like hawks.
The movers, realizing they'd landed in the middle of a legal mess, refused to touch another piece of furniture unless they got paid to load it back up. Kayla had to pay them double out of her own pocket just to get her dresser back onto the truck, crying from humiliation while the neighbors watched from their windows.
Before she climbed into the truck, Kayla glared at me through the police line, her face twisted with real hatred. "You're dead to us, Jenna. You have no family anymore. Enjoy your empty, lonely house."
"I will," I said quietly.
They drove off, the roar of the moving truck fading down the street, leaving the whole block silent again.
It's been six months since that Sunday. True to their word, my family hasn't spoken to me since. They blocked my number, and my mother told our extended relatives that I sued them and threw them out onto the street. Nicole told me about the rumors going around. I didn't care enough to correct any of it. The trash had taken itself out on its own.
Every morning now, I wake up in my own bedroom, walk down to my kitchen, and watch the morning light pour through that window exactly the way it did the day I got the keys. I fixed the back gate myself. I bought a new dining table that seats exactly four — just enough for me, Nicole, and any real friends who actually understand what a boundary is supposed to mean.
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My family thought my house was a resource for them to divide up. They were wrong. It was a fortress. And for the first time in thirty-one years, I am completely, entirely safe inside it.
THE END
