PART 2: THE LANDLORD THEY NEVER SAW COMING

“What happened?” Jessica asked, tightening the belt of her silk robe.

Colin didn’t answer. He was staring at the document in his hands as though the words had suddenly stopped making sense.

“Colin?” she repeated.

He swallowed hard. “Our lease is being terminated.”

Jessica snatched the papers from him. “What? That’s impossible. We’ve never missed a rent payment!”

“Apparently, the new owner wants to sell the property.”

She flipped through the pages, her expression darkening with every sentence.

“Thirty days? They’re giving us thirty days to leave?”

I took another quiet sip of coffee.

“That sounds inconvenient,” I said.

Jessica turned toward me. “Inconvenient? Margaret, we could lose our home!”

I looked around the kitchen I had cleaned almost every morning for four years.

The spotless countertops. The polished cabinets. The family photographs from which I had gradually disappeared.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I imagine that would be difficult.”

Colin suddenly noticed the second envelope tucked behind the legal documents.

It was cream-colored, with his name written across the front in my handwriting.

“Mom?” he asked. “Why is there a letter from you in here?”

Jessica stopped breathing for a second.

I set down my cup.

“Why don’t you read it?”

His fingers trembled slightly as he opened the envelope.

I watched his eyes move across the first paragraph.

Then he looked up at me.

“No.”

He read another sentence.

“No, Mom. This isn’t possible.”

Jessica leaned over his shoulder.https://www.deep-usa.com/my-daughter-in-law-mocked-my-2-birthday-scratch-off-i-smiled-hiding-what-the-winning-numbers-revealed/2/#:~:text=SHARE-,%E2%80%9CWhat%20does%20it%20say%3F%E2%80%9D,THE%20END.,-PREVIOUS