Chapter 1: An Unwanted Package
“Here is your grandmother, Callie. We are tired of carrying her around, so you need to do something useful for once in your life,” Uncle Joel declared while leaning against the frame of his pickup truck.
Callie froze in the doorway of her small apartment in the quiet suburb of Fairview, her hair still damp from a quick shower and her robe pulled tightly around her waist.
Standing before her on the cracked sidewalk was her grandmother, Geneva, perched on a flimsy folding chair like a piece of luggage someone had forgotten at the airport.
Geneva wore a faded wool sweater, a skirt covered in coffee stains, and a pair of mismatched house slippers that looked like they had seen better decades.
Behind them, her uncle Joel did not even bother to turn off the engine of his rusted truck, leaving the exhaust to fill the morning air with a thick, gray haze.
His wife, Dakota, held her smartphone in one hand and adjusted her oversized sunglasses with the other, looking more bored than guilty.
“What on earth did you do to her?” Callie asked, her voice cracking as she felt a lump of pure terror and anger rising in her throat.
“Nothing happened to her,” Joel replied, tapping his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel while glaring at the pavement.
“She is old now, she gets lost, she screams at the walls, and she breaks everything she touches, so stop playing the victim,” he added coldly.
Callie couldn’t believe her ears and stammered, “Did you really sell her house behind our backs?”
Dakota let out a short, bitter laugh that sounded more like a bark, shaking her head at Callie’s naivety.
“Oh, please, don’t act so surprised, especially since you never contributed a single dime to her care,” Dakota said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror.
“She signed the papers herself, and that is all that matters to the law, so consider this your reward for being her favorite granddaughter,” she finished with a smirk.
Geneva finally looked up from her lap, her eyes clouded and confused as she scanned the unfamiliar street.
“My dear, is this my house, or have we taken a wrong turn?” Geneva whispered, her voice trembling like a leaf in the wind.
Callie felt her heart shatter into a thousand pieces, wanting to scream at them until her lungs burned or call the police to drag them back to justice.
