Her hand froze halfway to my collar.
“I have an emergency key.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
She looked toward the door. “I checked on the property.”
“Who went with you?”
Silence.
“Mom.”
“Jasmine and Kyle.”
“And someone else?”
Another pause. “A designer.”
I actually laughed once. “You brought an interior designer into my home?”
“She only took measurements.”
Measurements. Not a family conversation. Not an idea. They had already started planning renovations.
I looked at my mother. “You decided I was moving before you ever asked me.”
“We knew you would do the right thing.”
Something inside me became very calm.
“I need time to think.”
Her shoulders relaxed. “Of course.”
“I’ll handle it.”
She smiled, relieved, and opened the French doors.
What she didn’t know — what none of them knew — was that I had already handled it.
Three weeks earlier, before the London trip, I had accepted an offer on the condo. A cash buyer, a clean ten million, closing scheduled for the first week of January. I had already signed the preliminary sale documents. The listing had never gone public; the buyer came through a private network, the way lakefront properties at that level usually move.