As my daughter shoved me against my own kitchen wall and said, “You’re going to a nursing home. Or you can sleep with the horses in the paddock. Pick one,” I didn’t cry.

When the lawyer told us, I saw something flash in my daughter’s eyes. It wasn’t happiness. It was ambition. George stood behind her with a smile that chilled me. My instincts whispered something was wrong, but I pushed the feeling aside. Alexis was my daughter—my little girl. She’d never betray me.

How wrong I was.

Three months after the inheritance arrived, Alexis and George came to my house with a proposal: they wanted to build an inn on the property. Tourism was growing, and they needed me to temporarily sign the land over to them to secure a bank loan.

A voice inside me screamed not to sign. But Alexis held my hands and, in that soft voice that always weakened me, said, “Mom, trust me. We’re going to make something wonderful here. You’ll finally be able to rest without working yourself to death.”

George chimed in, “Miss Sophia, you deserve a break. We’ll handle everything.”

And I signed. God forgive me—I signed. Continue reading…