“We changed the locks for safety,” my dad’s note said on my own front door. -hongtran

My dad sat at the head of the table, fingers laced loosely together. Linda sat on his right, posture straight, expression carefully neutral. Savannah was on his left, one hand lazily circling her belly in slow, deliberate motions, as if she were in a commercial for prenatal vitamins.
“Phyllis!” Linda rose slightly, air–kissing the space near my cheek. “So good you could make it.”
Savannah glanced up, gave a nod. “Hey.”
I shrugged off my jacket and hung it over a chair. “What’s up?”
They did the small talk first, of course. Asked about my job. Commented on the traffic. Linda mentioned a new restaurant they’d tried. Savannah rolled her eyes at something Tyler had done last week, then abruptly shut down that topic.
After a few minutes, the air shifted.
My dad cleared his throat. “So. The reason we wanted to talk…”
He glanced at Linda, then at Savannah, then back at me. “You know things have been… a little challenging for Savannah lately.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Because she’s pregnant?”
“Because she’s pregnant and Tyler left,” Linda said, her voice taking on that sugar–coated firmness she used when she wanted to sound compassionate and authoritative at the same time. “He wasn’t ready to be a father. He said he needed ‘space to think.’”
Savannah snorted softly, bitterness flickering across her face. “He needed space to be an idiot,” she muttered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it. That had to hurt, regardless of how I felt about her.
Linda exhaled dramatically. “She’s going to be raising this baby on her own, Phyllis. And you know this house—” She glanced around, though we all knew she meant their house. “—it’s already tight as it is. We barely have room for the nursery.”
I’d been in their house plenty of times. It wasn’t exactly cramped. Spacious, actually. A guest room, a big office, a finished basement. But I let that slide.
Dad jumped in. “We’ve been thinking a lot about… stability,” he said. “About what would be best for everyone.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of my chair. That word—everyone—rang in my head like an alarm bell.
Linda leaned forward, folding her hands, her smile tightening. “Phyllis, sweetheart, you’re living all alone in that big house your mother left you.”
There it was.
My heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “I am.”
“You’re not married,” she continued. “You don’t have kids. You’re doing great on your own, and we’re proud of you. Really. But it just… makes sense to us that maybe… you could make a small sacrifice for the sake of the family.”
Her tone was so gentle that for a split second, you could almost forget there was a knife under the velvet.
“What kind of sacrifice?” I asked.
She gave a practiced little laugh, like this was all so reasonable, so obvious. “Since you’ve got all that space and it’s just you, we thought maybe Savannah could move into your house for a while. At least until the baby’s a little older and she’s more stable. She needs room. A safe place. A fresh start.”
I stared at her.
Then at my father.
Then at Savannah.
Savannah wouldn’t meet my eyes, but the slight upward tilt of her chin, the relaxed way she sat, told me this was not a wild suggestion she was hearing for the first time. This was a plan.
I blinked. “Move into my house,” I repeated.
Dad nodded, seemingly relieved the words were out. “We’d help with the bills, of course. Maybe help you find a more… practical place for yourself. Something smaller. You don’t need all those rooms, Phyllis.”