People already paid.”
The representative calmly repeated that the account could not continue advertising a property after the verified owner reported it as unauthorized.
Eric looked at me.
“Fix this.”
I almost laughed.
Four days earlier, he had told me to stay out of his business.
Now his business needed the legal owner of the property he had taken.
“No,” I said.
Dad slapped his hand against my kitchen counter.
“You’re going to cost your brother money over a technicality?”
I opened the folder.
“Ownership isn’t a technicality.”
The first page was a copy of the record showing the cabin belonged to me.
The second was a still image from my security camera.
There was Dad on the porch, pointing toward the lock.
There was Mom beside him.
There was Eric with his cooler.
And there was the locksmith working on a door none of them owned.
Dad glanced at the photograph and immediately looked away.
“That proves nothing.”
I turned another page.
It was the screenshot of my message from the night I found them inside.
I read it aloud.
“I do not authorize the rental business, the lock change, the reservations, or your entry into my property.
If you proceed anyway, every listing, payment, guest promise, and decision stays under your own names.”
Then I read Dad’s response.
“Correct.
We’re handling it because you wouldn’t.
Eric is managing everything.”
Mom sank slowly into one of the kitchen chairs.
Dad stared at the page.
“You set us up.”
“No.”
I looked at each of them.
“I told you no at dinner.
You ignored me.
I told you again in writing.
You confirmed that you were ignoring me.
I just stopped rescuing you from your own choices.”
Eric began pacing.
“What about the guests?”
That was the first sensible question anyone had asked.
“The platform is handling the reservations.
Nobody is arriving here believing they rented a cabin you had no right to rent.”
“You could have just let the first weekends happen,” he said.
“Then everybody wins.”
“Everybody except the person whose house you took.”
“You weren’t using it!”
There it was again.
The argument my family kept returning to as though unused property became communal property.
I pointed at his new watch.
“You’re not looking at that watch every second of every day.
Can I sell it while you’re asleep?”
Eric’s jaw tightened.
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
