Sitting in my office reviewing payroll for my twelve employees, I watched my security monitor in disbelief as a rented moving truck blocked my gravel driveway. My mother stood beside my twin sister Mallory, her husband Grant, and their three children with cardboard boxes stacked against my locked gate. Through the intercom my mother demanded that I open the gate immediately because they were moving into my massive home. They had driven three hours and already assigned themselves the downstairs bedrooms and my detached workshop without ever asking my permission. What caught my attention most was the old weathered envelope my mother held in her hand. It was the desperate letter I had mailed to her twelve years earlier when I was nineteen years old and homeless. Back then Mallory had become pregnant and my mother decided my bedroom would become the nursery for the baby. I was told to leave with only forty three dollars in my pocket and nowhere to sleep. I eventually ended up living in a discount tent behind a flea market. I wrote that letter begging for temporary shelter but she completely ignored my plea and left me to survive entirely on my own.
My survival during those early years was built on the furniture restoration skills my grandmother Elaine had taught me before she passed away. A kind furniture shop owner named Thomas Reed gave me a chance after I proved I could repair a badly damaged oak dresser. I worked long hours for Thomas and saved enough money to rent a tiny leaking room above a laundromat while taking community college business courses using a small inheritance my grandmother had left me. That tiny room was the first place where nobody could throw me out and I locked the door three times every night just to feel safe. When Thomas retired three years later he allowed me to purchase his struggling business through an installment agreement. Over the next seven years I transformed that small shop into a highly successful company specializing in historic homes and custom cabinetry. By the time I was thirty one I owned a beautiful home on several acres outside Ridge Hollow. I bought the property with a security gate not to impress anyone but to ensure I would always wake up knowing I truly belonged there and could never be displaced again.
