Eventually, I touched the microphone.
“What are you doing here?”
Mom’s expression changed immediately.
Not relief.
Irritation.
As though I had kept her waiting.
“We’ve been driving for almost four hours. Open the gate.”
I looked at the truck again.
“What’s in the truck?”
Lauren moved closer to the camera.
“Mom told you.”
“No. Mom texted that you were having problems with your house.”
“Our lease ended.”
Derek called from several feet away.
“The owner sold the place.”
“That doesn’t explain the truck outside my gate.”
Lauren gave me a look I remembered from childhood.
The one that said I was making something unnecessarily difficult.
“We need somewhere to stay for a while.”
“You should probably find one.”
Silence.
My mother leaned toward the speaker.
“Emma.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what we’re asking.”
“You’re standing outside my house with furniture.”
Derek laughed.
Actually laughed.
Then he pointed toward the main house behind the gate.
“You have more room than you could ever use.”
That sentence landed harder than he knew.
Because thirteen years earlier, my mother had stood in the doorway of my childhood bedroom and said almost the same thing.
Lauren needs the space more than you do.
Back then, that sentence had cost me everything.
This time, it wasn’t going to cost me anything.
I folded my arms.
“You’re not moving in.”
Lauren’s mouth fell open.
Mom looked stunned.
“You cannot be serious.”
“I’m completely serious.”
“We have children with us.”
“I can see them.”
“And you’re going to leave your own nieces and nephew without somewhere to sleep?”
“I’m not leaving anybody anywhere. You arrived here without permission.”
Derek walked up to the keypad.
“Look, Emma, just open the gate. We’ll unload and talk inside like adults.”
“Do not touch that keypad.”
He looked directly into the camera.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Mom shook her head.
“I knew success had changed you, but I never imagined it had changed you this much.”
Success.
That was interesting.
My family had always liked that word.
It allowed them to skip the part where I had once slept in a car.
They liked the finished house.
The company vehicles.
The acreage.
The polished kitchen.
They were much less interested in how I had gotten any of it.
I glanced at the small security panel beside my monitor.
“Move your vehicles away from my entrance.”
Lauren stared at me.
“Emma, where exactly do you expect us to go?”
“That’s something the four adults outside my gate should have figured out before driving here.”
Then I disconnected the intercom.
I thought that would end it.
It didn’t.
It was only the beginning.
