“All right. Go home. Let me see what I can do.”
She walked away, her steps heavy.
I stood there for a long time, watching her figure fade into the snowy night.
Back in the office, I opened my laptop. An email from my lawyer was already waiting in my inbox.
Ready to send foreclosure notice as scheduled.
I placed my hand on the mouse.
For the first time in years, my heart pounded like it did when I was a child giving a class presentation.
I didn’t hate them.
But I wouldn’t protect them anymore.
The truth would come out, and none of them were ready for it.
Three days later, my mother came to the bookstore.
No warning. No text. No call.
She burst through the door like she was running from something, her eyes red and mascara streaked down her cheeks.
I stood behind the counter, set the notebook down, and tried to keep my voice calm.
“What’s going on, Mom?”
She exhaled shakily and pulled a stack of house documents and another notice from Harborstone Financial out of her bag.
The third one I’d seen that month.
“Mia, they said if we don’t pay in five more days, they’ll take the house. I—I have nothing left. I need your help.”
I looked up at her.
Her hair was messy, no longer pinned with her usual gold clip.
The Louis Vuitton purse she always carried had been replaced with a worn canvas bag.
She looked like the crumbling house itself, still trying to stand tall but rotting from the inside.
I held back the bitter ache rising in my chest.
Not out of pity, but resentment.
All those years she’d called me incompetent, average, lacking potential.
And now she was begging the same daughter she once regretted having, saying she shouldn’t have been born.
I kept my face calm.
“Mom, I work at this bookstore. I make $2,400 a month. After rent, utilities, food…”
I opened the drawer, pulled out a stack of small bills, and counted them.
“I have exactly $3,000 saved. Do you need all of it?”
She stared at me, stunned.
Then her expression turned to anger.
“Mia, you can’t be this selfish. This is your house too. You grew up there. If we lose it, what do you think will happen to us?”
“Did you think about that when you refinanced the house a third time to buy Logan that Rolex?”
She froze.
“He needs to maintain his image for investors. He has a future. He’s this family’s last hope.”
“And what am I, Mom?” I asked, still gently. “The good-for-nothing you call when you’re desperate? The rest of the time, I’m just the useless bookstore clerk.”
She fell silent.
After a while, she started breathing heavily, then slammed her hand on the counter.
“I raised you. I fed you. Put you through school, and now you’re counting dollars on me like a stranger.”
I clenched my hands under the counter but smiled.
“I paid for college myself, Mom. I remember clearly because you said, ‘There’s no money. It all went to Logan.’ I worked three jobs for four straight years. Do you remember that?”
She looked at me as if she couldn’t understand the language I was speaking.
I gently pushed the stack of documents back toward her.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help. That money is all I have.”
That evening, my father called.