“Save For Next Time.”
I sat down on my own kitchen floor in wrinkled navy scrubs and stared at that note until the words blurred.
Then I stood up, washed my hands, opened my laptop, and made three lists.
Legal.
Logistical.
Personal.
At the top of the page, I wrote one sentence.
“This House Is Mine, And They Are About To Learn What Mine Means.”
Part 2
The first person I called was not my mother.
That would
have been the old Arden.
The old Arden would have called and explained. She would have tried to make them understand. She would have said things like, “I’m hurt,” and “Please respect my space,” and “Can we talk about this?”
The old Arden believed that if she found the right words, cruel people would suddenly become decent.
The woman standing in my kitchen that Tuesday morning did not believe that anymore.
I called Soraya Flint, an attorney I knew from high school who now ran a small civil practice in Davidson. Two years earlier, we had run into each other at a charity 5K, and she had handed me her card after hearing one story about my family.
