Chloe smiled as if she hadn’t just been assigning herself my property.
“I thought you’d be late.”
I set the food on the table.
“Finished early.”
Then I sat down.
We talked about meaningless things.
Mom told us about a neighbor.
Dad complained about holiday traffic.
Chloe excitedly described expensive furniture she had been browsing.
Flynn announced he was close to landing a “massive deal.”
I smiled through all of it.
When coffee came out, Chloe casually asked, “Hey, Jessi, do you happen to remember the exact length of your living room wall?”
I looked directly at her.
“Not off the top of my head.”
“Ah, bummer.
I saw this gorgeous sectional online.”
Mom kicked her beneath the table.
I pretended not to notice.
At 10:30, I excused myself, locked myself in the bathroom, and checked my phone.
There was a message from Marcus, the real estate broker who had helped me assess neighborhood values months earlier.
Since October, he had repeatedly mentioned an institutional buyer—a corporate investor looking for move-in-ready three-bedroom units in my building to lease to transferred executives.
I had always declined.
That night, I typed:
“Is your buyer still interested?”
Marcus answered in under a minute.
“Yes.
He asked about your unit two days ago.”
“Offer?”
“If the legal review comes back clean, $680,000.
All cash, quick closing.”
I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror.
Then replied:
“Tell him I accept.”
I saved the conversation, washed my hands, and went back to dinner.
Chloe was showing Mom a picture of a marble coffee table for “her new living room.”
I sat across from them and smiled.
PART 2
For the next three weeks, Chloe enthusiastically planned her move into a home she had never owned.
Watching it was almost fascinating.
Every day brought another social media update:
“Decor shopping for the new place!”
“The kids will finally have their own bedrooms!”
“New beginnings.”
In one post, she posed outside my building’s main gate, pointing upward beneath the caption:
“Home sweet home very soon.”
Mom commented:
“You deserve it, sweetie.”
I liked the post.
That afternoon, Chloe called me.
