I gave a calm, vague answer and went upstairs. That night, I lay awake thinking about the phrase “family house” and the way Norma had said it, as if my moving in had confirmed an arrangement they had already discussed without me.
My name is Elena. I was thirty-one, and I worked in financial compliance for a regional accounting firm. My job was to read documents carefully and find the gap between what they appeared to say and what they actually meant.
I was good at it.
I had also been careful with money my entire adult life. My mother raised me alone after my father left, and she taught me to record everything.
Mother-daughterjewelry
“Not because everyone is dishonest,” she used to say. “Because memory is optimistic. Paper is not.”
I owned a house of my own. A modest three-bedroom in a quiet neighborhood. I had renovated it myself, room by room. It was fully paid off. No mortgage. No partner on the deed.
