My stomach tightened.
“You want me to… buy you a house?”
Patricia laughed, waving her hand. “Oh, don’t be dramatic! Not buy it outright! Just a small down payment. Maybe… $150,000?”
“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars?” I repeated, gasping. “That’s… that’s almost a third of everything I have left.”
“Oh, but think of it as an investment in family!” Patricia reached across the table to pat my hand, and I resisted the urge to pull away. “And really, what would your mother want? For you to hoard all that money, or help family?”
The mention of my mother made something inside me snap. “Don’t you dare bring my mother into this.”
“I’m just saying —”
“My mother worked herself to death to provide for me,” I said, my voice trembling. “She missed dinners, birthdays, and school plays… all so I could have a better life. And you want to use her sacrifice to buy yourself a retirement home?”
I waited for Jake to step in. To say, “Mom, no. That’s insane.”
Instead, he said, “It makes sense, babe. We HAVE the money.”
“We?”
That was it. I wasn’t his wife. I wasn’t family. I was a piggy bank with a pulse.
I was DONE.
That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, feeling something I hadn’t felt in months — clarity.
My mother’s voice echoed in my head: “Stand up for yourself, Helen.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I whispered into the darkness, “I’m sorry it took me so long, Mom. But I’m ready now.”
I wasn’t just going to say no. I was going to teach them a lesson they’d never forget.
The following week, I hosted a family dinner. Not just for Jake and his parents — for his ENTIRE family. I invited his brother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. If they had our last name, they were there.