Chapter 2 - THE 53 MISSED CALLS"What did you just say to me?" Derek froze, his hand hovering over the trunk handle.
My mother dropped my box of clothes, the cardboard splitting open and spilling my sweaters across the porch steps. "Have you lost your absolute mind, Naomi? You are a guest in this house! You have lived off us for three years!"
"Three years," I repeated, letting out a sharp, humorless laugh that echoed down the quiet suburban street of Oak Ridge. "Let's talk about those three years, Mom. Let's talk about the $4,000 furnace I bought with my own savings when yours died in the middle of a blizzard. Let's talk about the $12,000 in back property taxes I paid last spring so the county marshal wouldn't lock the front doors."
Derek rolled his eyes, adjusting his designer sunglasses. "Oh, please. Spare us the sob story. Everyone knows you're just bitter because you're a lonely thirty-three-year-old corporate drone with no life."
"Am I?" I pulled my phone out of my pocket and unlocked the screen. The notification banner flashed instantly: 53 Missed Calls. Every single one of them from Helen.
I held the screen up so they could all see it.
"You called me 53 times last night because you thought I was crying in my car," I said, locking eyes with my mother. "You thought I was broken. But while you were sleeping soundly in the master bedroom—which I repainted and re-floated last summer—I was with my lawyer, Sophie."
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My father finally stepped out of the shadows, his face turning pale. "Naomi... what lawyer?"
"The kind of lawyer," I smiled sweetly, "who looks at a quitclaim deed, a fraudulent mortgage transfer, and three years of uncompensated structural investments, and calls it a goldmine."
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