PART 1

After a twelve-hour shift at St. Mercy Medical Center, I pulled into my apartment parking lot completely drained. My scrubs smelled like antiseptic and stale coffee, and my phone had been buzzing nonstop.

It was my  family group chat.

Dad: “We’re using your lake house this weekend. Twenty guests.”

Mom: “Stock the  fridge and don’t make a scene.”

My younger brother Kyle added laughing emojis.

I stared at the messages, exhausted. Then I typed one word.

No.

Mom replied almost immediately.

“You really think you can stop us?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I called Margaret, my neighbor near the lake house.

“If anyone shows up this weekend,” I told her, “they do not have permission to enter.”

Then I changed every door code, disabled the old keypad, shut off the guest Wi-Fi, activated the cameras, and called a locksmith.

By the next afternoon, every lock had been changed.

I also emailed the sheriff’s office to state clearly that no one had permission to enter my property.

That lake house was mine. I bought it after six years of double shifts, skipped vacations, cheap meals, and sacrifices no one in my family cared to notice.

It was not family property.

It was not theirs to use.

Friday morning, my father called forty times. I answered the forty-first.

“What did you do to the house?” he shouted.

“The front code doesn’t work! Your mother is outside with groceries melting!”

“Then everyone should leave,” I said.

“This is a family weekend!”

“No,” I replied. “It’s a trespassing attempt with witnesses.”

On the camera feed, I saw twenty people standing on my porch.

Then a sheriff’s cruiser rolled into the driveway.

PART 2

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