That night, driving back to my quiet condo, I understood something I had avoided for years: I was not cherished. I was convenient. I was useful when a mortgage needed padding, when property taxes were due, when a roof leaked or a babysitter was required. But when usefulness wasn’t required, I disappeared. That realization settled over me with the clarity of a market correction in luxury real estate: brutal, precise, unavoidable.
Four days later, they were pounding on my door, frantic, voices cracking with panic. By then, the decision had already been made. On Christmas night, after hanging up my coat and swallowing the humiliation, I opened a blue folder I hadn’t touched in years. Inside were the closing documents for the five-bedroom house on Parker Lane. Three years earlier, I had sold my own home to help my son and his wife secure better financing. The interest rates were unforgiving; the equity I carried was not. The loan officer had been clear: the title would remain in my name. There was a clause—standard but powerful—allowing me to terminate occupancy with thirty days’ notice for any reason.
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