Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The address on the lease was not my parents' house.
It was my apartment.
For a second I thought I was too tired to read. I blinked hard, looked again, and felt the floor tilt under me.
17B Hawthorne Court.
The same two-bedroom apartment I had rented for the last three years. The same place I had left after the ceiling leak because my mother insisted, "Come stay with us for a few months. Save your money. Let Noah's lungs recover."
My name was on the lease.
But so was another name.
Marcus Martinez.
I sat on the twin bed in the moldy basement and opened the folder with shaking hands. Inside were copies of the lease agreement, utility transfers, and a stack of receipts. Rent had been paid every month.
Not by me.
By my mother.
And the apartment had never been vacant.
My stomach dropped.
I flipped through more pages until I found a recent inspection notice dated two weeks earlier. The unit had been occupied by Marcus and Jessica Martinez since April.
April.
Four months ago.
The month my mother told me the apartment was "uninhabitable" and pressured me to move my children into her house.
I heard footsteps upstairs and shoved the papers back into the folder, but not before taking photos of every page.
My mother came down carrying folded sheets.
"Those are for the kids," she said, not looking at me.
I held up my phone. "Why is Marcus living in my apartment?"
Her face went perfectly still.
My father appeared behind her, and the silence stretched so long I could hear the furnace humming.
Finally she sighed, as if I were the unreasonable one. "It's temporary."
"You told me the building had mold."
"It did."
"You told me I had to move out for Noah's health."
"And you did."
"Then why is Marcus there?"
My father's jaw tightened. "Watch your tone."
I stood up so fast the twin bed scraped the floor. "My children are sleeping next to black mold while my brother lives in my apartment?"
My mother folded the sheets with precise little movements. "Marcus needed a place close to the city. Jessica's pregnancy is high stress. We were helping family."
"By taking my home?"
"You were staying here anyway."
"Because you told me my home was unsafe!"
My voice cracked, and Emma looked up from the bed with wide frightened eyes.
I took a breath and forced myself quieter. "How long were you planning to let us stay down here?"
"Until Marcus's house is ready."
"And if Noah ends up in the ER because of this basement?"
"Don't be dramatic."
That did it.
I picked up Noah's inhaler and held it up between us. "I spent all day watching parents beg doctors to help their children breathe. Do not tell me I'm being dramatic about mold and asthma."
My father stepped forward. "This is our house."
"And that apartment is my lease."
"Marcus has a family to think about."
I stared at him. "So do I."
He looked away first.
That hurt more than if he had shouted.
Twenty minutes later, Emma and Noah were buckled into the car with blankets wrapped around them. My mother stood on the porch demanding to know where we were going.
"Somewhere my children can breathe," I said.
"Don't make this into a war, Elena."
I laughed once, sharp and exhausted. "You already did."
As I drove away, Noah fell asleep against the window. Emma stayed awake.
"Are Grandma and Grandpa mad at us?" she asked.
"No, sweetheart."
"Then why did they give our room away?"
I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles whitened. Children always asked the question adults spent years avoiding.
"Because sometimes grown-ups make selfish choices."
She thought about that for a moment. "Will we get our room back?"
I looked at the photos on my phone: the lease, the payments, the signatures.
Then I looked at the road ahead.
"No," I said quietly. "We're getting something better."
What I did not tell her was that before dawn, I had already emailed the photos to myself, to a housing attorney whose number I still had from the ceiling leak, and to the county health department.
By morning, my parents would discover that taking my apartment had been a mistake.
By afternoon, they would learn that putting my asthmatic son in a moldy basement had been a much bigger one.
And by the end of the week, Marcus would find out that the lease he thought was a gift came with a problem his mother could not clean up with a smile.
Because buried in that folder was one more document I had not mentioned to anyone.
A notarized power of attorney with my forged signature on it.
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And forgery is not a family arrangement.
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