On his final day, he handed Mom an envelope.
Inside was a grocery-store gift card and a note apologizing for living upstairs while she had been in the basement.
Mom called him immediately.
“You paid for a room,” she told him. “You believed what you were told. You don’t owe me an apology.”
After everyone moved out, I asked Mom what she wanted to do with the empty rooms.
“Rent them again?” I joked.
She gave me such a look that I burst out laughing.
Then she laughed too.
It was the first time I had heard that sound since coming home.
We turned one bedroom into a sewing room.
Another became a proper guest room.
The third stayed empty for a while.
I had planned to return to Singapore after four weeks.
Instead, I negotiated a transfer to my company’s Seattle office.
Not because Mom could not live independently.
