I looked at each of them carefully, searching for even a hint of guilt or hesitation, but I found nothing except relief.
Tyler grabbed my suitcase, walked to the door, and shoved it outside onto the porch as cold March air rushed into the house.
“You can go now,” he said without hesitation, “And do not come crawling back.”
Behind him, my parents laughed, and that sound stayed with me longer than anything else.
What they did not know, and what none of them had taken the time to understand, was that the account Tyler had emptied was not truly mine to use freely.
Most of that money had been placed there under a court controlled arrangement after my aunt Linda’s death, and every transaction was monitored carefully.
By the time Tyler forced me out of the house, the bank’s fraud department had already started calling my phone repeatedly.
I spent that first night in my car behind a twenty four hour grocery store, parked under a flickering light with my suitcase in the back seat and my hands gripping the steering wheel.
At 11:17 p.m., my phone rang again from an unknown number, and this time I finally answered.
“Ms. Olivia Stone?” a woman asked in a professional tone.
“Yes,” I replied quietly.