“Yes, Dad?”
“Is Sophia doing alright?”
“She’s safe,” I said quietly.
He nodded.
For a moment, it looked like he wanted to say more.
Instead, he turned and walked away.
Three days later, my father packed his clothes and moved out of the apartment, temporarily staying with his brother across town.
My mother called me that night, shaking with fury.
“You destroyed this family!”
“No, Mom. You did.”
“Your father walked out on me because of you!”
“Dad left because he finally decided to leave.”
“You brainwashed him with your lies!”
“I showed him official documents bearing his own signature.”
Then she said something I would never forget.
“When you finally take this apartment—if you even can—you’re going to sit in those empty rooms all by yourself and realize you gained four walls and lost a mother.”
I looked at Sophia sleeping peacefully in our small rented room, one sock still on and the other kicked off beneath the blanket.
“Mom, the day you threw my daughter’s food in the trash, you decided what kind of mother and grandmother you wanted to be,” I said coldly. “I didn’t make that choice for you.”
I hung up.
Forty-eight hours later, a court process server delivered the formal legal demand to surrender the property.
My mother refused to sign.
She also refused to leave.
So Adrian filed the civil unlawful detainer action.
It wasn’t a quick, dramatic victory.
Real legal disputes rarely work that way.
There were filings, process servers, verified answers, motions, rescheduled hearings, legal bills, and weeks of waiting.
Meanwhile, Sophia and I left the boarding house and rented a modest one-bedroom apartment close to her daycare.
It wasn’t luxurious.
But it belonged to our little life.
On our first night there, Sophia ran back and forth across the living room rug, laughing.
“Mommy, nobody else uses our bathroom here!”
I laughed and wiped away a tear.
“That’s right, sweetie. Nobody else.”
I took on more freelance editing, working through manuscripts late at night to cover our living expenses and legal bills.
