ty-four years old, stop living like a parasite and find somewhere else to die with your daughter.”
My mother said it while holding my two-year-old daughter’s bowl of chicken soup.
Before I could respond, she walked to the stainless steel sink and poured the entire bowl out. Warm broth disappeared down the drain, noodles clung around the strainer, and a soft piece of carrot spun beneath the running water.
My daughter, Sophia, stared at her empty plastic bowl. “Grandma… my soup…”
That small, confused voice hurt more than anything my mother could have said to me.
My twenty-nine-year-old sister, Karla, sat near the dining window scrolling through Instagram as if nothing unusual had happened.
“Mom’s right,” she muttered without looking up. “It’s about time you stopped using this place like a free hotel. The rest of us actually work.”
I stared at her.
Karla lived in a condo across town, and for almost four years, I had quietly paid her monthly mortgage from my own account without anyone in the family acknowledging it.
Still, I said nothing.
My father, Arthur, slowly folded his newspaper.
For half a second, I thought he might finally step in.
He didn’t.
Instead, he stood, picked up Sophia’s stroller, opened the apartment door, and placed it outside on the cold concrete landing near the stairs.
Then he came back inside and sat down.
That was all.
