On my birthday, when I expected at least a cake or a kind word, she sat me down and dropped her bombshell.

“You need to start paying rent,” she said, arms crossed. “You’ve been spoiled long enough. It’s time to act like an adult and pull your weight around here.”

I just looked at her, trying not to laugh. Rent? In the house that had been my mom’s before it was mine? But I didn’t argue. I smiled, nodded, and kept my mouth shut.

What Karen didn’t know was that before she died, my mom had left me the house in her will. The paperwork had taken years