The doctor delivered the news in the calmest voice imaginable, which somehow made it worse. Six months, maybe less. That was all the time my mother had left, and before I could even begin processing the fact that I was about to lose her, another truth hit me hard enough to drown out the grief.
My brother had sold the house. Not just any house—our house. The place where every birthday had happened, where my father’s laughter still seemed trapped in the walls, where Mom planted tomatoes every spring even after her hands started shaking too badly to garden properly.
And he sold it without saying a word to me. I found out from a neighbor loading boxes into a moving truck. By the time I got to Caleb’s apartment that night, I was shaking with rage so badly I could barely keep my voice steady.
“You sold it?” I demanded the second he opened the door. “You actually sold Mom’s house while she’s still alive?”
He looked tired, but not surprised. “Yes,” he said quietly.
Just yes. No explanation. No apology.
Nothing. That single word lit something inside me on fire. “You greedy vulture,” I snapped.
“Couldn’t even wait until she was gone before cashing in?”
He flinched, barely, but I saw it. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Then explain it!”
But instead of fighting back, he just stood there, silent, like he had already accepted that I would hate him no matter what he said.
And somehow, that silence felt worse than any excuse could have. “I don’t want to see your face again,” I told him before walking out. He didn’t stop me.
The months after that blurred together into hospital visits, medication schedules, sleepless nights, and the quiet heartbreak of watching someone you love slowly disappear while pretending everything is okay for their sake. Without the house, I moved Mom into a small rental apartment across town. It was clean enough, but it never felt like home, no matter how many family photos I placed on the shelves or how often I opened the curtains to let sunlight in.
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