The envelope contained four pages. Nine years earlier, when foreclosure threatened my parents’ home, I had paid off their mortgage and become the legal owner, promising they could continue living there. Diane had signed the transfer without bothering to read it. Now the first page ended every payment I’d been making\u2014the mortgage, utilities, and medical insurance. The third gave them sixty days to sign a fair rental agreement or move out.<\/p>\n
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But the fourth page hurt most. It was the Christmas seating chart, with Tiffany’s catering invoice printed on the back. Somehow they’d found twenty-six seats for clients and neighbors, yet none for seventeen-year-old Harper. Gordon asked how I could do this on Christmas morning. \u201cHarper drove fifty minutes through a snowstorm and ate half an orange for dinner,\u201d I replied. \u201cYou did this on Christmas Eve.\u201d Then I handed Diane a printed email she’d sent an aunt calling me unstable.<\/p>\n
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