He said nothing.
I handed him a white envelope.
“What is this?”
“A lease.”
Sarah stared.
“A what?”
“If you want to continue living here, you will pay fair market rent starting next month.”
Mark looked at the document.
“You’re charging us rent?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve never charged us rent.”
“I know.”
Sarah snatched the pages.
“This is ridiculous.”
“You’ll pay one-third of utilities. You’ll arrange your own insurance, phones, groceries, transportation, and personal expenses.”
She kept reading.
“And if we don’t sign?”
“You have thirty days to find another place.”
Her eyes snapped up.
“You can’t throw us out.”
“I own the house.”
“We’ve lived here three years.”
“That does not make it yours.”
“Mark!”
He looked exhausted.
“Mom, where are we supposed to go?”
I felt the old instinct rise.
Fix it.
Offer money.
Find them an apartment.
Tell them everything would be fine.
Then I remembered the video.
Pathetic failure.
At least her credit card is useful.
“You are adults,” I said. “You will figure it out.”
They did not sign.
For the next three weeks, the house was tense.
They packed at night.
Doors closed harder than necessary.
Sarah stopped speaking to me except when required.
Mark tried twice to restart the conversation, but both times he began with explanations instead of accountability.
“We were under stress.”
“We didn’t mean it.”
“The video sounded worse than it was.”
I refused to debate what I had heard with my own ears.
By the twenty-eighth day, a moving truck parked at the curb.
Their new apartment was across town.
Two bedrooms.
Smaller kitchen.
No garage.
No guest suite.
No mother quietly paying the bills.
Mark carried boxes outside.
Sarah supervised the movers.
I stayed out of the way.
Near noon, Mark came inside with a spare key in his hand.
