Randall went along with it every time.
He nodded and agreed and distanced himself further until I was just another obligation to be managed.
I tried to talk to him about it once, gently suggesting that Nova seemed to want to separate him from his old life.
His response chilled me.
“Nova just wants what’s best for our family, Mom. She says you never learned healthy boundaries because Dad left and you became too dependent on me. She’s helping me see that.”
Dependent.
After raising him alone, working double shifts to pay for his college, cheering him through every triumph and heartbreak.
I was the dependent one.
That’s when I stopped trying so hard.
If Nova wanted Randall to choose between us, I wouldn’t force him to make that choice.
I stepped back, filled my life with other things, and tried to build a new relationship with my son based on whatever scraps Nova was willing to allow.
Now, sitting in my beautiful beach house with Whiskers purring on my lap, I understood what had been happening all along.
Nova hadn’t just wanted Randall to herself. She’d been systematically erasing me from his life, rewriting our history, making me the villain in a story where I’d only ever tried to love my son.
And tomorrow’s phone call hadn’t been about a family reunion.
It had been the final move in a three-year campaign to push me out entirely.
My phone buzzed with a text message.
Nova’s number.
“Hi, Dorene. So excited about the reunion. Just wanted to confirm you’ll be staying in the guest cottage, right? We want to make sure the main house is available for Patricia and the relatives with mobility issues. Thanks for being so understanding. Xoxo.”
Guest cottage.
She was already reframing it, making the tool shed sound like a deliberate choice instead of an exile.
I stared at that message for a long time, thinking about all the ways I could respond, all the arguments I could make, all the hurt I could express, all the ways I could beg for basic respect in my own home.
Instead, I typed back, “Of course. Looking forward to meeting everyone.”
Let her think she’d won.
Let her bring her entire family to witness my humiliation.
Because Nova had made one crucial mistake.
She didn’t know who she was dealing with.
She saw an old woman easily dismissed and pushed aside. She saw someone who would quietly accept whatever scraps were thrown her way.
She had no idea she was dealing with someone who had survived medical school as a single mother, who had worked her way up from floor nurse to charge nurse to supervisor through sheer determination, who had faced down angry doctors and grieving families and bureaucratic nightmares for four decades.
Nova wanted to play games with my family, my home, my life.
Game on.
The next morning, I decided to clean out the tool shed. If I was going to be forced to stay there, at least I could make it bearable.
The building was larger than Nova thought. It had been converted by the previous owners into a small workshop with a bathroom and even a little kitchenette, but it was filled with leftover furniture and boxes from the estate sale.
I was moving a dusty armoire when I saw it.
A manila folder that had fallen behind the furniture, probably dropped during the move.
I picked it up, thinking it might be old warranty information or instruction manuals.
But when I opened it, my blood ran cold.
Real estate listings.
Not for houses in Virginia where Nova’s family lived, but for properties right here in Ocean View.
Expensive properties, beachfront condos starting at $400,000, luxury homes in gated communities, and written in Nova’s distinctive handwriting across the top of one listing:
Perfect for our new start.
My hands trembled as I flipped through the pages.
There were notes everywhere, calculations, financing options.
But what made my stomach lurch was a printout from a mortgage calculator showing monthly payments for a $600,000 home with my address listed as current property value for trade sale consideration.
This wasn’t about a family reunion.
This was about stealing my house.
I sank onto an old paint bucket.
The papers scattered around me like evidence of a crime.
Everything started making horrible sense.
The phone call about me being irresponsible with my finances.
The suggestion that I needed assisted living.
The casual mention that maybe I should move back to the city.
They weren’t planning to visit.
They were planning to stay.
My phone rang and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Randall’s number.