Brooke’s laugh disappeared the instant I pulled the folder from the bottom drawer of the oak hutch she had spent weeks calling depressing.
Ryan watched me cross the room with it tucked beneath my arm.
A few minutes earlier, he’d been angry about the six hundred and fifty dollars I expected them to contribute each month.
Brooke had called it extortion.
Ryan had reminded me that their new house was still only a shell, as though that somehow made me responsible for financing their life until construction was finished.
I returned to my chair and laid the folder on the coffee table.
Neither of them spoke.
“Then stop saving for your house with my money,” I repeated.
Brooke recovered first.
She gave a little shrug, but the confidence behind it had changed.
“Nobody is using your money, Renata.
You’re making this sound ridiculous.
We live here.
Families share expenses.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Families share expenses.”
I opened my notebook beside the folder.
I had not started keeping records because I was planning revenge.
I started because the bills had changed so dramatically after they moved in that I wanted to understand where my money was going.
Before Ryan and Brooke arrived, I knew roughly what each month would cost me.
I knew how often I bought groceries, how long a tank of gas lasted, what the heating bill looked like in winter, and what my water use normally was.
Then two more adults moved in.
The refrigerator emptied faster.
The dishwasher ran constantly.
Brooke worked from the dining room most days with lights, chargers, appliances, and electronics going from morning until evening.
They took long showers.
The heat was adjusted whenever one of them decided a room felt cold.
None of that would have bothered me if they had treated it as what it was: a favor.
Instead, the favor had slowly become an entitlement.
At first Brooke asked before putting things in different cabinets.
Then she stopped asking.
She moved framed photographs because they looked “cluttered.” She suggested replacing my curtains.
She complained that the upstairs rooms were wasted space.
She treated my furniture as though she were evaluating a property she expected to inherit control of.
Ryan rarely challenged her.
Worse, he began borrowing her language.
The house was inefficient.
I was stubborn.
I was stuck in the past.
And whenever I showed the smallest resistance, I was apparently making a scene.
I turned a page in the notebook.
“Heating rose around forty percent after you moved in,” I said.
“Water increased.
Groceries increased.
Electricity increased.
I wrote down the difference month by month.”
Brooke stared at the notebook.
“You kept records on us?”
“I kept records on my household expenses.”
“That’s insane.”
Ryan leaned forward.
“Mom, nobody asked you to buy expensive groceries.”
I looked at him.
“You mean the groceries you both eat?”
His mouth tightened.
Brooke crossed her arms.
