He walked over to the table and picked up the phone.

His hand was shaking so badly he almost dropped it.

He read the screen.

His face went pale.

“She’s waiting for us to leave,” he said.

“She’s waiting to see if we bought the story.”

He threw the phone back onto the table.

It bounced off the wood and clattered onto the floor.

The screen cracked across the middle, but the blue light stayed on.

“Arthur, please,” my mother said, reaching out a hand.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

He backed away from her as if she were covered in grease.

“Don’t you ever touch me again.”

“It was for the family,” she sobbed.

“There is no family,” he said.

“You killed it.”

He looked down at the table.

The deed transfer documents were sitting right there in the center.

They were the papers that would sign my apartment over to them.

I had spent ten years of my life paying off this one-bedroom place.

And they had come here today to take it from me.

To take the only thing I owned.