At fourteen, I lost my mother, just months after her divorce from my father. Her death left a void, and my father coped by burying himself in work, while I drifted through the house feeling lost.
A year later, he remarried a woman named Karen, who came into our lives with forced smiles and a dismissive attitude toward my mother’s memory. I tried to get along, but her remarks and actions made it clear she had no respect for the life we’d had before her.
Karen’s true nature surfaced over time. On my eighteenth birthday, she demanded I pay rent—unaware the house legally belonged to me, as my mother had left it to me in her will. I hadn’t told anyone about the deed until that moment. When Karen tried to assert control, I revealed the documents proving my ownership, catching her off guard. She tried to deny it, but the truth was undeniable.
