My family left me to eat alone on my 75th birthday, using my money to vacation in Europe. So I sold the house while they were gone and moved next door to watch their faces when they came back…

That being a good mother meant giving until I had nothing left. But now I knew better. I wasn’t empty.

I wasn’t confused. I was just done being their foundation while they climbed over me to build castles I was never invited into. And for the first time in decades, I looked around my house and felt something strange belonged to me again.

A year passed, quietly, fully, like spring blooming through cold soil. I won’t lie, some days were hard. The kind of hard where you sit by the window and wonder if maybe you were too harsh.

For maybe you should have picked up when they called again. But then I’d remember the ache in my chest when I saw that Cancun photo. The way Andre looked me in the face and asked for an advance on my own death.

The sting of sitting alone at my birthday table with a dress I ironed just for them. So no, I didn’t pick up. Not when Andre called four weeks after the accounts were locked.

Not when he sent a single text with no punctuation that read, So it’s like that. Yes, it was like that. Because when I finally took control of my money, my name, my future, it felt like pulling myself out of a well.

I didn’t know I was drowning in. Nora helped me get everything in place. We filed the paperwork to transfer all my assets out of Andre’s reach.

We revoked every authorization he’d ever claimed. We reported suspicious charges. Some even refunded.

She also put me in touch with a financial advisor who spoke to me like a lady who understood the worth of every cent she had touched, rather than as though I was slow or simple. We then revised my will. All of my remaining funds, bonds, and property were donated to a non-profit that provides shelter and legal assistance to elderly women who have been silenced or coerced by their relatives.

Tyrell and Nora were the only ones I told. Indeed, Tyrell. Every week after things went apart, that boy came to see how I was doing.

Sometimes all he did was change my TV remote or bring bread. On other occasions, he only sat and listened while I discussed Harold or my past experience sewing prom gowns for half the block. He never made any requests, never thought he was deserving of anything…