The Gift They’ll Never Forget
By the time my mom called me on Christmas Eve, breathless and furious, the cameras were already setting up in my parents’ living room in Plano, Texas.
“Maya, where are you? Everyone is here. The church crew is here. This is not funny.”
I held the phone away for a second, listening to the crackle of voices behind her, the clink of plates, the polished noise of the life they were so proud to show off.
“Yeah, quick question, Mom,” I said. “Did you enjoy my gift?”
There was a beat of confused silence.
“What gift? Maya, we don’t have time for games. Pastor Jim is waiting to start filming the Christmas special. Your costume is hanging in the laundry room—”
“The envelope,” I said quietly. “The red one. On the dining room table. Did you open it?”
I heard rustling. Footsteps. Then my dad’s voice in the background: “What envelope?”
More rustling. The tear of paper.
Then silence.
Not the good kind. The kind that happens right before a storm breaks.
“Maya.” My mom’s voice had gone very quiet. “What is this?”
“That,” I said, “is an eviction notice. You have sixty days to vacate the premises at 4782 Knox Avenue. The building your flagship furniture store has been operating out of for the past eighteen months.”
“This is a joke. Who owns that building? We rent from—” She stopped. I could hear her reading the document. “Carter Properties LLC?”
“That’s me, Mom. I’m Carter Properties. I bought that building two years ago. I’ve been your landlord this whole time.”
The phone went dead silent except for the sound of my mother’s breathing.
“And Mom? You’re three months behind on rent. That’s $18,000 you owe me. Merry Christmas.”
The Beginning
But the real story started long before that phone call. It started seven years ago, when I was twenty-two and sitting in my parents’ living room, trying to explain why I was dropping out of pre-med.
“I don’t want to be a doctor,” I said, my hands clenched in my lap. “I want to work with cars. I want to open my own shop.”
My father stared at me like I’d announced I was joining a cult. My mother’s face went through several expressions before settling on horrified disappointment.
“Cars,” my dad repeated flatly. “You want to be a mechanic.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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