I knocked gently against the glass, and Delilah jolted awake so violently that terror crossed her face before she realized it was me. When she lowered the window, there was no relieved smile or happy surprise at seeing her mother; instead, she looked embarrassed that I had discovered where she and Noah were living.
“Mom.”
There was something broken in the way she said it. Before I could even ask what had happened, Delilah looked down and admitted that Evan and his mother had forced her out of the very house I had purchased for them years earlier.
Five years before, when Delilah married Evan Mercer, I sold a piece of inherited land and used the money to buy them a three-bedroom house in a peaceful neighborhood. I deliberately kept the deed under my own name because experience had taught me that paperwork offered protections promises couldn’t, but I handed them the keys and expected them to build a stable family there.
