Chapter 8 - Letting Go of the Ghost
Even with my mother and sister gone, the mansion felt wrong.
Every time Lira walked past the heavy oak doors, she flinched. Every time Leo played near the back patio, he would go quiet, looking at the door to the service kitchen with fearful eyes. The house wasn't a reward for my hard work; it was a tomb where my family had been buried alive while I was away.
"We're leaving," I told Lira one night, wrapping my arms around her waist as she washed dishes.
She froze. "Where are we going?"
"Anywhere you want. We're selling this place. It's too big, it's too cold, and it's poisoned."
Tears of pure relief flooded her eyes.
With Sterling's help, I managed to halt the foreclosure by explaining the fraud and proving my mother had intercepted the funds. We put the massive, gleaming house on the market. It sold in less than a month to a corporate executive who didn't care about the history, only the zip code.
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With the equity we recovered and the rest of my savings, we didn't buy another mansion. We bought a beautiful, sprawling ranch house in the Hill Country, an hour outside of Austin.
It had a wrap-around porch, big oak trees, and a massive kitchen filled with natural light. There was no service kitchen. There was no back door for the help. There was only us.
