I frowned.
“Thirty days for what?”
Our son looked at me.
“To leave the house.”
I felt as though I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
He continued:
“The property has already been transferred to the foundation. I can’t sell it. I can’t use it as collateral. I can’t keep living there.”
His voice trembled.
“I have nowhere to go.”
And suddenly, I understood everything.
That was why he had come here.
Not because a few days without us had broken his heart.
Not because he had woken up one morning and realized how badly he had behaved.
He was afraid of being left without a home.
My husband understood it too.
“So that’s why you’re here.”
Our son quickly looked up.
“No.”
My husband said nothing.
“That’s not the only reason.”
“Then tell me what the other reason is.”
Our son fell silent.
And that silence was the answer.
I looked down at my hands.
Something inside me broke.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
It simply broke.
“I thought you missed us,” I whispered.
“Mom, I do miss you.”
I looked straight into his eyes.
“Would you have come here if you hadn’t found those documents?”
He didn’t answer.
I waited.
But he still couldn’t say anything.
My husband leaned back in his chair.
For years, I had watched him forgive our son almost everything.
Bad decisions.
Broken promises.
Money he borrowed and never returned.
Visits he canceled at the last minute.
But that day, the expression on my husband’s face changed.
“You thought this house would one day be yours,” he said.
Our son looked away.
“I’m your only child.”
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“I thought that sooner or later…”
“Exactly.”
My husband nodded.
“You thought that sooner or later we would leave this world, and everything we had built for almost forty years would simply become yours.”
“That’s usually how it works!” our son burst out.
My husband suddenly stood up.
