They say you never really know someone until you see how they handle grief. My stepmother Cheryl’s method? Evicting me from my childhood home before my father’s body was even cold.
I should have fought harder when she told me to leave. But at nineteen, freshly orphaned and drowning in loss, I simply packed a bag and walked out. It wasn’t until I called Aunt Janine that the tides turned spectacularly in my favor.
The scene that greeted me the next morning belonged in a legal drama. Black SUVs. Stone-faced attorneys. And Cheryl, for once in her life, completely speechless as Janine laid out the truth: my father had secretly transferred the house to me over a year earlier.
“He knew,” Janine said simply as we watched Cheryl pack. “He always knew what she was.”
Walking through the house after Cheryl left felt like stepping into a photograph. Everything was the same, yet completely different. My bedroom still had the glow-in-the-dark stars Dad helped me stick to the ceiling when I was eight. The kitchen still smelled faintly of his terrible attempts at pancakes.
But the real revelation came when I found Dad’s old filing cabinet. Beneath stacks of insurance paperwork was a sealed envelope with my name on it. Inside, a letter written in his familiar messy scrawl:
Ellie-girl,
If you’re reading this, I’m sorry I couldn’t stay longer. The house is yours – always was, always will be. Don’t let anyone tell you different. And don’t you dare feel guilty about whatever happens next.
Love,
Dad
I read it three times before the tears came. Then I took my guitar out to the back porch – the same one Dad built when I was twelve – and played until the sun went down.
