The words struck me so suddenly that I froze in the doorway with my overnight bag still hanging from my shoulder. I stared at the man yelling at me, trying to understand how I had somehow become an unwelcome guest inside my own property.
The man glaring at me was my brother in law, Bradley Norton. His face was tight with anger and his finger was pointed straight at my chest as if I had just broken into someone else’s house.
Behind him the living room looked like the aftermath of a family reunion. People I barely recognized were stretched across my couches. Someone was drinking from one of my wine glasses. A pair of muddy sneakers rested on the white carpet I had spent months protecting.
My name is Abigail Foster. I am thirty two years old and I work as a marine biologist in Wilmington, North Carolina. For the past decade I have built my career studying sea turtles and coastal ecosystems, and the beach house where I was now being yelled at was something I had purchased with my own money after years of saving and investing carefully.