I glanced at my watch. 7:43. Exactly 18 minutes after I made the call.
I answered on speaker so Wyatt could hear.
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“Leah, honey, there’s something wrong with your mortgage payment.” Her voice was shaking, almost panicked. “The bank called and said you withdrew as guarantor. That’s impossible. There must have been some mistake.”
“No way, Addison. I’ve canceled your mortgage and stopped all payments.”
“You can’t do this. We’ll lose our house.”
“Then I suggest you find a way to pay the installments yourself. You have 90 days before foreclosure proceedings begin.”
“Leah, please. We can fix this.”
“Shall we?” Because yesterday you made my children wait for leftovers while your daughter’s children ate first. You told them to know their place. So now you’ll know yours.
I hung up.
Wyatt stared at me with a pale face.
“What did you just do?” he whispered.
“I took everything I gave them. The mortgage, the truck loan, Payton’s rent. It ends today.”
“They will lose everything they have.”
“All right.”
My phone rang again. Roger. This time I let it go to voicemail, and a moment later I heard his angry voice leaving a message about how I was destroying my family, how I didn’t deserve it, and how he wanted me to fix it.
Twelve minutes after the first call, my phone rang a third time. Payton, sobbing, rang before I could even say hello. Discover more
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“You told Frank to stop paying me rent. Leah, without this help, I can’t afford the apartment. I’ll be evicted.”
“Then I suggest you ask your mother for help,” I said calmly. “Oh, wait a minute. She’s about to lose her house because I stopped subsidizing her lifestyle.”
“You vengeful…”
“Be careful what you say, Payton, because I’ve also informed your attorney in the custody case that I will no longer be covering your legal fees. I think you still owe them about $8,000. I’m sure they’re very anxious to get paid as soon as possible.”
The connection was interrupted.
Seventeen minutes after the first call.
I looked at Wyatt, who was staring at me as if he had never seen me before.
“I’m keeping track of time,” I said. “Eighteen minutes. The exact amount of time our children sat with empty plates, watching their cousins eat. Every phone call, every moment of panic they’re experiencing right now—it matches what they did to Mia and Evan. Minute by minute.”
“Leah, they will lose everything they have.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
The next morning at 6:00 a.m., Wyatt’s phone rang. His mother’s. He glanced at the screen, looked at me, and didn’t answer. Thirty seconds later, the phone rang again, and again. And again.
By the time we ate breakfast, he had fourteen missed calls from various family members. I had nine. The call flood began.
Addison’s first voicemail began with tears. Learn more Plates Plates
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“Leah, honey, please call me back. There’s been a terrible mess with the bank. They say we’re losing our house. Please, we need to sort this out. Call me.”
The second voicemail, recorded an hour later, sounded different.
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, but this isn’t funny. You can’t ruin our lives just because you’re angry over a minor disagreement. We’re family. Call me back immediately.”
The third voicemail was pure rage.
“How dare you do this to us after everything we’ve done for you? We welcomed you into our family with open arms. We treated you like a daughter, and this is how you repay us? By taking our home? You’re a hateful, vengeful woman, and Wyatt deserves better.”
I listened to each interview as Wyatt sat across from me, searching my face for a reaction. I tried to keep my expression neutral and clinical, as if I were reviewing data from a project at work.
“She’s completely losing control,” I said calmly.
“Leah, maybe we should…”
“What should we do? Give them another chance to tell our kids they’re not good enough? Write them another check so they can continue treating us like ATMs without batting an eye?”
He had no answer.
By noon, Roger had sent six text messages, each one increasingly aggressive. In the last one,
