“There’s a new owner,” I replied.
“We have two weeks before we move out.”
Her face turned red.
“You can’t make a decision like that without telling me! Where are we supposed to go?”
“We?” I repeated gently.
“You and the children will need to find a place to rent.”
“You have time.”
“What about my inheritance?” she blurted out.
“That’s all we have left!”
For the first time, I looked directly at her.
“Did you think I let you stay here so you could wait for me to die?”
She had no answer.
“That money,” I continued,
“was earned by your father and me. It is not a reward for someone who doesn’t know how to show respect.”
Her hands trembled.
“You can’t do this to me.”
I smiled sadly.
“You already did something far heavier to me.”
Two weeks later, I left before anyone woke up.
I carried only a small suitcase.
All the money—now safely in a new bank account under my name alone—was ready.
I had a ticket to Maui, Hawaii.
There, near the ocean, stood a small cottage I had quietly purchased months earlier.
I left no drama.
Only a letter on the kitchen table.
“Lily,
I love you.
But I did not live seventy years to feel disgusting in my own home.
It is time for me to choose myself.