Chapter 4 - The Eviction Reality
The vacation to Orlando lasted exactly three days instead of the planned two weeks. Without my credit cards, my parents and Tyler couldn't afford the theme park tickets, the expensive dining, or the rental car extensions. They flew back to Chicago on the cheapest night-flight available, arriving broken, exhausted, and furious.
On Monday morning, exactly one week after the incident, I received a notification from my security company. The smart-lock on my downtown apartment recorded an unauthorized entry attempt. It was my mother, trying to use her emergency spare key. Fortunately, I had changed the deadbolts and revoked her biometric access the very night I brought Lily home.
A few minutes later, my phone began buzzing with text alerts from my ring doorbell.
I opened the app on my computer. There they were, standing on the welcome mat outside my door: my mother, looking disheveled and frantic, and my father, his face purple with rage, pounding his fist against the wood.
"Rachel! Open this door right now!" my father shouted into the camera. "You have crossed the line! Your brother’s kids are crying because their vacation was ruined! And we just got a notice from the building management that our lease renewal was denied! You open this door and fix this right now!"
I tapped the microphone icon on my app, speaking calmly from my office desk miles away. "I am not at home, Richard. And even if I were, you are no longer welcome on my property."
My mother gasped, looking directly into the camera lens. "Rachel! Honey! How can you call your father by his first name? We are your parents! We love you! This has gone way too food! The landlord says we have twenty-three days to move out or they will start eviction proceedings! We don't have forty-five hundred dollars a month to pay for that condo! Where are we supposed to go?"
"You can move in with Tyler," I said coldly. "Since you care so much about his children's happiness over my daughter’s safety."
"Tyler lives in a three-bedroom house with four kids, Rachel! There's no room for us!" my mother wailed, tears finally leaking down her face—though I knew they were tears of financial panic, not remorse. "You are doing this to punish us? Over a mistake? We didn't know she would be scared! We thought she was a brave big girl!"
"She is eight years old," I said, my voice trembling with a sudden surge of raw emotion. "You left her on the side of a highway. If a stranger had picked her up, if she had wandered into the traffic, if anything had happened to her... you wouldn't be worrying about your condo lease right now. You’d be wearing handcuffs."
My father pushed my mother aside, leaning his face right up to the camera. "Listen to me, you ungrateful little brat! We raised you! We gave you everything! You think you're so smart with your corporate job and your fancy high-rise? You owe us! If you don't sign that lease renewal and reactivate your mother's cards by tomorrow morning, I am going to your corporate headquarters and I will tell your CEO exactly what kind of cruel, unfilial daughter they have running their risk department!"
May you like
I smiled, though it felt entirely devoid of warmth. "Go ahead, Dad. My CEO is a mother of three. And I’ve already submitted the security footage from Route 83 to our legal team to ensure my corporate background check remains clear of any family drama. If you show up at my office, security will arrest you for trespassing. You have twenty-three days to pack your things. Goodbye."
I cut the feed.
