They didn’t know I wasn’t graduating from a community college certificate program. They had no idea I was graduating from the university’s elite, top-tier medical school.
I didn’t say a word. I turned on my heel, the plates left untouched, and descended the creaking stairs to my windowless basement room.
As I reached the bottom step, the floorboards above my head creaked. The house was old, and the air vents carried every whisper like a megaphone. I stood dead still in the dark as Victoria’s hushed, conspiratorial voice drifted down through the aluminum grating.
“Are the papers drafted?” she asked.
“Yes,” Thomas replied, his tone devoid of any paternal warmth. “Once this ridiculous graduation is over on Friday, we’ll present her with the eviction notice. She’s officially eighteen now; she has no legal claim to her mother’s estate anymore. Haley needs that basement cleared out. It’s going to be her new personal content studio.”
The morning of the ceremony, the sky over University Hall was a bruised, violently churning gray. The rain didn’t just fall; it attacked in heavy, freezing sheets, turning the grand limestone pillars of the campus into slick, imposing monoliths.
