“Your father approved it,” she replied, already impatient, “Megan wants the upstairs room with the balcony, we’ll take the primary suite, and you can use one of the smaller bedrooms since you don’t need much space.”
I felt my spine straighten as if someone had pulled a wire through it. “Sylvia, this is my house.”
She gave a short laugh that felt like silk wrapped around a slap. “It’s a house, family shares, we’ll arrive around ten, have coffee ready.”
“If you don’t like it,” she added coolly, “you can live somewhere else,” and then she hung up.
I kept the phone to my ear for a few seconds listening to nothing and then slowly lowered it while staring at the dark water. My hands shook, but my face softened into a small, cold smile because I did not cry and I did not call her back.
Instead I remembered a hallway from seventeen years earlier and the lesson I learned about people who take from you, which is that they rely on your shock and depend on good girls freezing. I was not seventeen anymore.