My ten-year-old granddaughter bent across my dining table and deliberately spat onto the mashed potatoes on my plate.
Then she leaned back with a grin.
“Mom says you deserved it.”
For one frozen second, I waited for my daughter to react.
Sarah raised one hand to cover her mouth, but there was no shock in her expression.
She was trying not to smile.
My son-in-law Greg laughed from across the table.
“Oh, come on, Carolyn. She’s just messing around. Stop being so sensitive.”
That was the moment something inside me went completely still.
I was sixty-five years old, sitting at the same dining table where my late husband Robert and I had raised our children.
Surrounded by three people who depended on me financially.
And every one of them was laughing at me.
Two years earlier, Sarah, Greg, and Lily had moved into my mortgage-free house because they needed “a few months” to recover financially.
A few months became two full years.
I cooked. I cleaned. I helped look after Lily. I paid the utilities, Sarah’s car insurance, Greg’s gym membership, the family phone plan, five streaming subscriptions, groceries, and Lily’s gymnastics classes.
Whenever I questioned it, Sarah gave the same answer.
“We’re family, Mom. Do you want us living on the street?”
For two years, that worked on me.
