I hired movers.
Not friends. Not family. Professionals.
Then I called my father.
He answered on the third ring.
“Rachel.”
No hello.
“I’m coming Saturday at ten to collect the rest of my belongings,” I said. “I’ll have movers with me.”
There was a pause.
“You should have called earlier.”
“I’m calling now.”
“You can’t just show up with strangers.”
“I can, actually.”
My voice sounded calm in a way that made me stand a little straighter in my new kitchen.
“I lived there seven months. My belongings are there. I’ll be there at ten. If that doesn’t work, you can put everything on the porch before then.”
“Don’t take that tone with me.”
I looked at the keys on my counter.
“I’m not taking a tone. I’m giving you information.”
Another silence.
Then my mother’s voice in the background.
“Is that Rachel?”
My father covered the phone poorly. “She says she’s bringing movers.”
I heard Vanessa laugh.
That laugh decided something for me.
“Also,” I said, “please have the expense list ready.”
“The what?”
“The bill you gave me Christmas Eve.”
“You know what that was.”
“I do. I’d like a copy.”
“Why?”
“Because I want my records complete.”
My father said nothing.
Records made him nervous now.
Good.
On Saturday morning, I arrived in a rented moving van with two men from a company Simone recommended. They were polite, efficient, and uninterested in family tension, which was exactly what I had paid for.
My father opened the door.
He looked older than he had on Christmas Eve, though only a week had passed. My mother stood behind him, arms folded around herself. Vanessa was in the living room, pretending to scroll her phone but watching every move I made.
No one hugged me.
That was fine.
I walked in with the movers behind me and a clipboard in my hand.
“Bedroom upstairs,” I told them.
My father blocked the hallway for half a second, then stepped aside.
It was a small moment, but I felt it.
Christmas Eve, he had stood between me and my things.
This time, he moved.
My room looked wrong. Not ransacked, not touched enough to accuse anyone of cruelty, but subtly disturbed. Drawers not fully closed. The jewelry box shifted. My notebook missing from the desk. The closet door open.