My stepmother handed me a trash bag of my clothes and said, “Your father is d;ea;d, and the house is mine. Get out.” She slammed the door in my face while her kids laughed from the window. I was eighteen, broke, and alone. She thought that was the end of the story. She didn’t know my father had left a separate, secret will in a safety deposit box that only I had the key to. Ten years later, I bought the company she worked for. Today, I’m going to walk into her office and ask her the same question she asked me: “How does it feel to lose everything?”

“We got it back, Dad,” I whispered. “It’s clean now.”

I walked through the house, room by room. It felt smaller than I remembered. The monsters that lived here were gone.

I opened the back doors, letting the fresh breeze wash away the scent of gardenias.

I was eighteen, broke, and alone once. Now, I was twenty-eight, wealthy, and free.

I took out my phone and called my contractor.

“Hello, Mr. Vance,” the voice answered.

“I’m at the house,” I said, looking at the peeling wallpaper and the stained carpets that bore the marks of Victoria’s reign.

“What’s the plan, sir? Renovation?”