2: 2

2

The next day, every single thing in the apartment had a price tag on it.

Washing machine, eight dollars a load.

Water heater, five dollars for a ten-minute shower.

Gas stove, thirty cents a minute per burner.

Living room TV, three dollars an hour.

Toilet flush, one dollar a time.

Looking at the payment QR code stuck on the toilet, I half thought I'd walked into a pay-per-use public restroom.

Lucia brought over a plastic basin.

「Mom, if you think flushing's too expensive, you can save your water in this basin and flush once a day.」

I asked her, : 「Do you do that too?」

「I'm the lady of the house. Obviously it's different for me.」

Said it flat out.

Didn't even bother with a fig leaf.

I'd moved in two months ago because Lucia had changed jobs and couldn't leave early during her probation period. She said she didn't trust a nanny, so she wanted me to help pick up and drop off the child.

I got up at half past five every morning.

I made breakfast for three, took Jim to preschool, then went to the market for groceries. Afternoons I picked up the child, did the laundry, made dinner. At night Jim slept with me, because Lucia said having the kid around got in the way of married life.

Two months, and I'd lost eleven pounds.

They hadn't given me a single cent.

And yet Lucia pulled out a ledger.

「These are the costs you've run up since you moved in.」

Room occupancy fee, eighty a day.

Air conditioner wear-and-tear fee, six hundred.

Sofa cleaning fee, three hundred.

Kitchen equipment usage fee, four hundred fifty.

Fridge, washing machine, and water heater, billed separately.

Seven thousand eight hundred sixty-six in total.

「I knocked off the loose change for you. Seventy-eight hundred.」

I turned to the last page.

Even the time I mended Jim's backpack with needle and thread, she'd charged me two dollars for living room lighting.

「You asked me to come take care of the child, and now you're charging me room and board?」

「One thing has nothing to do with the other.」

She leaned back on the sofa, the slippers on her feet the ones I'd bought her.

「You did help watch the child, sure, but you've also enjoyed the living conditions in our home. A place this size out there rents for six or seven thousand a month.」

Abner sat next to her, playing on his phone.

I asked him, : 「You think I should pay too?」

He didn't look up.

「Lucy's already done the math, so just give it to her. You get over six thousand a month in pension, it's not like you have anywhere to spend it.」

「Why don't I have anywhere to spend my pension?」

「You eat our food, live in our place, you don't wear more than a few outfits. Save it up and in the end doesn't it all come to me anyway?」

Something clogged up in my chest.

When he was very little, he'd had pneumonia.

I sat in a hospital hallway holding him for three nights, not daring to close my eyes.

When he went to college and complained the dorm was too hot, I ate plain bread and pickles for two months straight so I could buy him the most expensive evaporative cooler on the market at the time.

When he got married, I put up two hundred thousand in savings for the wedding banquet, and begged Maud to lend him the apartment.

Now he'd already arranged where my pension would go.

I couldn't spend it while I was alive.

After I died, it had to be his.

「Fine. I'll give you the money.」

Lucia immediately pulled up the payment QR code.

I didn't scan.

I took out the account I'd drawn up the night before.

Pickups and drop-offs over two months, forty-four times, fifty a time.

Breakfasts and dinners, a hundred twenty meals, figured at twenty a meal.

Laundry, cleaning, overnight care, calculated at the lowest housekeeping rate.

Nineteen thousand six hundred total.

「Subtract your seventy-eight hundred, and you owe me eleven thousand eight hundred.」

Lucia snatched the bill and tore it into four pieces.

「Are you done? Trading on family to squeeze out money, doesn't that make you sick?」

The scraps fell to the floor.

I bent down and picked them up, one by one.

「You set the rules. How come only you get to make money, but I'm not allowed to run the numbers?」

She kicked the coffee table aside. : 「I'm just not going to pay. What are you going to do about it?」

「Nothing.」

I tucked the scraps into my pocket.

「From today on, you cook your own meals, wash your own clothes, and pick up your own child.」

Abner finally put down his phone.

「Mom, there's a limit to throwing a fit. This afternoon Lucy and I both have work. Who's going to pick up Jim?」

「Whoever gave birth to him can pick him up.」

I went back to my room to pack.

The door had barely shut when I heard Lucia's voice outside.

「Who does she think she's fooling? Three days, tops, and she'll come crawling back to beg us.」

3: 3

3

I didn't get my three days.

That very night, Jim sat waiting at the preschool until seven-thirty.

The teacher couldn't reach either parent, so she called me.

By the time I got there, he was alone in the security booth, nose red from crying.

"Grandma, Mommy said you'd come get me."

Lucia knew I'd said I wouldn't pick him up, and she dumped him on me anyway.

I couldn't leave a four-year-old standing at the curb.

When we got home, the two of them still weren't back.

The fridge held two cups of yogurt and half a bottle of red wine.

I made Jim a bowl of noodles.

The second I turned on the stove, my phone buzzed.

Lucia had watched it through the camera in the house.

"Mom, the stove runs thirty cents a minute. You used twelve minutes. Don't forget to pay three-sixty."

I hung up.

Past nine, the two of them came in reeking of a night out.

Abner saw the boy and acted like nothing had happened.

"Told you my mom would never really leave him hanging."

Lucia pointed her phone at me and filmed.

"Mom, weren't you charging everyone for everything? How come you picked him up? Your mouth says one thing, your body does another."

I carried Jim into the bedroom.

Early the next morning, I left, dragging my suitcase.

Lucia didn't stop me.

She stood on the balcony filming me, set it to sad music, and posted it online.

The title was 《Mother-in-law resents raising her own grandson without pay, abandons four-year-old and walks out》.

In the clip, I had my head down, dragging the case.

The part where she demanded seven thousand eight hundred, the part where they dumped the kid at preschool, all of it cut out.

By that day it had passed five hundred thousand views.

People tracked down my account.

Some called me a useless old hag who should've died already.

Some said I'd seized my son's marriage home, freeloading off them and still demanding a salary.

Someone even took an old photo of me from my textile-mill days and turned it into a black-and-white funeral portrait, captioned "The wicked old bat, the sooner she's gone the better."

Lucia went live and cried.

"I really didn't mistreat my mother-in-law. I only pushed for fairness, everyone in the family sharing the load, and she decided a daughter-in-law had no right to set rules."

Abner sat beside her, sighing.

"My mom's always been controlling. She paid for our wedding and found us a place so she'd have a hold over us later."

People in the room were sending them gifts.

Lucia cried for two hours, and the family storage bins in her shop sold over a thousand orders.

I finally understood.

Those payment codes were never just about squeezing a few dollars out of me.

She was manufacturing conflict.

The more humiliated I looked, the more traffic her account pulled.

That evening I went to the bank to check my account.

Eighty thousand was missing from my pension card.

Abner had set up mobile banking for me a while back, tied to his own number.

The money had gone into Lucia's account three hours earlier, memo: "Household expenses, back payment."

I called Abner.

"You transferred my money?"

"Mom, that's not your money. That's what you owe us."

"Transfer it back."

"Lucy's pregnant with our second. She needs a new car. You're the grandmother, what's wrong with putting in eighty thousand?"

I gripped the phone, my knuckles white.

"Who gave you permission to touch my card?"

"I'm your son! When you're sick, when you're old, when it's time to bury you, who else are you going to lean on? So I spent a little early, what's the problem?"

On the other end, Lucia said loudly, on purpose:

"Tell her, if she wants the money she can come back and apologize, and sign the guarantee to take care of the second baby."

Abner was quiet for a few seconds.

"Mom, Lucy's giving you a way out too. Don't push away the last family you've got."

I hung up and reported the card lost right away.

Then I called Maud.

She heard me out, and asked only one thing.

"Olive, how many more times are you planning to clean up his mess?"

I looked at the statement the bank had printed for me.

"This is the last."

4: 4

4

The next day, Lucia moved the family meeting into the HOA office.

Her parents came, and so did my brother-in-law's family and the community mediator.

Livestream gear was set up on the table.

She spun the eighty grand as money I'd handed over on my own, a gift toward the second baby's car.

Then she pulled out a copy of the "Rules for Living With the Elderly" and told me to sign.

Rule one: while residing here, you will defer to the woman of the house.

Rule two: housework and childcare are acts of family affection, and no payment may be demanded for them.

Rule three: each month, eighty percent of your pension goes to supporting your children and grandchildren.

Rule four: you will not interfere with your son and his wife's finances.

Rule five: you may not move out without permission, so as not to affect the child's mental and physical health.

I finished reading and pushed the paper back.

"Is this a set of rules, or a servile contract?"

Janet Lawrence, my daughter-in-law's mother, slapped the table.

"Don't you know a good deal when you see one! You eat and sleep in your kid's home. What's wrong with doing a little work? Our Lucy is carrying a Whitney baby, and you're the mother-in-law. Shouldn't you be waiting on her?"

"She's carrying Abner's child, not mine."

Someone in the room let out a laugh.

Janet's face went dark.

Lucia wiped at her eyes and spoke straight into the camera. "You all heard that, right? That's what my mother-in-law just said. She won't even claim her own grandson."

I looked at Abner.

"The eighty grand. When are you paying it back?"

"Sign first."

"No."

His face darkened.

"Then don't ever come home again."

"Fine."

I took out my phone and canceled the auto-payments for water, electricity, gas, and the HOA fees.

Abner thought I was bluffing.

"It's a few hundred bucks. Who can't cover that? All you know how to do is throw your weight around over pocket change."

Lucia got even more worked up.

"Starting today, the lock code is changed. Whenever you come to your senses, that's when you can come back. I already had your bags put out in the hallway, so don't go saying I kept your things."

Outside the HOA office, my clothes, my medicine, and my old photo albums were dumped across the floor.

One of the plastic bags had split open.

The only photo I had of me and my late husband had fallen out, half a shoe print stamped across it.

Abner saw it.

He didn't pick it up.

I bent down and wiped the photo clean.

Lucia was still livestreaming.

The comments were all praising her for having principles.

My brother-in-law's wife came over, pretending to talk sense into me.

"Come on, if the kids want you to sign, just sign. A woman gets old, who's she got to lean on if not her son? Act tough now, and the day you're really flat on your back, don't come crying."

Janet jumped in even faster.

"Of course she has to lean on a daughter... oh, that's right, she doesn't have one."

A few of them laughed.

Abner stood off to the side, still saying nothing.

I asked him, "You think I can't survive without you too?"

He pressed his lips together.

"Mom, just back down a little and things can go back to how they were. You have to go and offend every last person, and one day when something really happens, who's going to sign your surgery consent form?"

"I signed yours for thirty years."

I slid the trampled photo into my pocket.

"Never once saw you learn how to be a decent person."

Lucia shoved the camera up close to my face.

"Look, everyone, she's guilt-tripping again. Having a kid was her own choice. Why should the kid owe her gratitude for it?"

The comments flew past.

Someone told Abner to cut ties with me right there.

He glanced at his phone, like he'd finally made up his mind.

"Mom, once you walk out that door today, don't ever say I didn't give you a chance."

I held the box tighter.

"That line, I'll give right back to you, word for word."

I lifted the box and started for the door.

Janet called after me, "You can't spoil a mother-in-law like that. Let her stew a couple of days, and she'll come crawling back to beg you."

The elevator doors opened.

A woman with gray-streaked hair stepped out.

Behind her came a lawyer, a real estate agent, and two workers from a moving company.

The HOA manager hurried over to greet her.

"Teacher Smith, what brings you here in person?"

Lucia's sobbing stopped.

She looked at the HOA manager, then at the woman.

"Who are you?"

Maud Smith took out the property deed and set it on the table.

"I'm here to take back my house."

The real owner had come home.