“You don’t get to use her memory to validate a free house,” I said, blinking against the sting in my eyes.
“Your mother wants you to apologize for calling the police,” he said.
I laughed—a sharp, humorless sound. “They brought a moving truck to my doorstep. I didn’t start this, Dad. But I’m going to finish it.”
He looked at me for a long moment, swallowed, then turned toward his truck and drove away into the dark.
Two weeks later, I was halfway through reheating leftover soup when my phone buzzed with a text from my neighbor, Gloria.
Someone just tried to get into your house through the back. I called police. You should come home.
The bowl slipped from my hands and clattered into the sink.
The drive up the mountain blurred. When I pulled in, two police cruisers were already parked out front. Gloria hurried toward my car.
“I heard heavy footsteps on your deck, then the door handle rattling,” she whispered. “It looked like a woman. Dark hair. She ran off toward the road before the police arrived.”
Lydia.
Officer Hartman stepped toward me, gesturing toward the back deck. “We found evidence of a forced entry attempt. Looks like someone tried to pry open your doorframe with a tool.”
Fresh gouges were cut deep into the wood around the lock.
“Can you arrest her?” I asked.
“Not without clear footage,” he said. “But this incident strengthens your harassment case.”
The next day, I hired an attorney recommended by Jess—a man named Gregory Hayes. I brought my growing folder of evidence.
After looking through the timeline, Gregory looked at me over his glasses. “They don’t have a legal leg to stand on. This is purely an intimidation campaign to force you to bend. We will request a formal dismissal of any financial claims, and then we move forward with a restraining order for harassment.”
The next six weeks blurred into a slow march of paperwork. And finally, the day of the hearing came.
I walked into the courtroom with my spine straighter than it had felt in years. Across the aisle sat my mother, my father, and Lydia. None of them looked at me.
My mother spoke first, weeping, insisting the CPS call was a misunderstanding, that the move-in was a pre-arranged family agreement, and that I had become emotionally unstable.
Then Gregory stood. He laid out the timeline calmly, piece by piece. The unannounced move-in, the police-verified trespassing, the text threats, the false CPS report, and the attempted forced entry on the deck.