The turkey was still warm when my father looked across the Thanksgiving table and calmly told me I needed to move out.

The screen of my phone cast a cool, bluish rectangle of light against Simone’s guest bed.

In the first photo Wren had sent, my mother’s tidy cursive was unmistakable. Every line item of the family’s monthly survival—*Mortgage: $1,845; Power: $210; Water: $85; Internet: $89; Car Ins (Brent/Dad): $310*—had my name bracketed neatly beside it. In the background of that shot, the door to my old bedroom stood wide open. Brent’s oversized amplifier and stacks of plastic storage tubs were already crowding the threshold.

Then the three typing dots pulsed.

Wren’s second message arrived in three fragmented lines:

*Dad’s workers' comp case didn’t drag on.*

*He settled sixteen months ago.*

*Two hundred and forty thousand dollars, Cass. I found the tax statement in his desk while Brent was hauling his junk upstairs.*

My fingers went completely numb.

I sat motionless on the edge of the mattress, listening to the muffled rumble of traffic two streets over from Simone’s townhouse.

Sixteen months.

For four hundred and eighty days, I had calculated every dollar before spending it. I had skipped dental cleanings to cover oil changes on Dad’s truck. I had bought store-brand groceries, worn six-year-old winter coats, and told myself that family stood together during catastrophes.

Whenever Dad had winced while reaching for the salt shaker, I had felt a spike of guilt for secretly wishing he’d find work at a desk. Whenever Mom had sighed over the kitchen table, smoothing out unpaid water shut-off notices, I had written checks until my savings account hovered around three digits.

And all the while, my father had been sitting on nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

“Cassidy?”

Simone stood in the doorway holding two mugs of tea, her brow furrowed in immediate concern. “What is it? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I couldn’t speak. I simply rotated the phone and handed it to her.

Simone read Wren’s texts. Her jaw tightened, her knuckles blanching around the ceramic handles of the mugs. “Tell me this is a sick joke.”

“Wren doesn’t lie about numbers,” I said. My voice sounded flat, stripped of resonance. “She’s the only person in that house who actually looks at paperwork.”

“Two hundred and forty thousand dollars,” Simone whispered, setting the mugs on the nightstand before she dropped them. “While you were paying their mortgage? While Brent was drinking imported beer on your dime?”

“They kept me around as an annuity,” I said, the realization settling into my chest like lead. “Dad didn’t want to touch his windfall. Why spend his retirement or Brent’s inheritance when Cassidy has a steady salary and a guilty conscience?”

“What are you going to do?”