“Mom,” I said, keeping my voice calm, “open the door.”
She pulled back the curtain.
“Not until you shower somewhere else. I don’t want that chemical smell in my house.”
My house.
I swallowed.
“I brought Dad’s medicine.”
“Leave it in the garage,” she snapped. “You can eat there too. I put your plate by the toolbox.”
Tyler laughed from inside.
That sound finally broke something inside me.
For four years, I had worked twelve-hour shifts at a sanitation chemical facility because the pay was good and my family needed help.
When Dad’s business collapsed, I caught up the mortgage.
When Tyler lost his job, I paid his truck loan.
When Mom said the grandkids needed stability, I refinanced the house in my name because nobody else qualified.
They called it temporary.
Temporary became years of my paycheck disappearing while my bedroom moved from upstairs to the converted laundry area, then eventually to the garage “until things settled.”
