I set the mug down on the coffee table carefully, because my fingers had gone cold and shaky. “I use the second bedroom as a home office. I work remotely three days a week.”
“You can work from a coffee shop,” Mom interjected briskly, as if she were solving a minor logistics problem. “Young people do that all the time. Laptops and headphones and whatnot.”
“I manage a whole team,” I said, trying to keep my voice level and professional. “I’m on video calls four hours a day. I need privacy, quiet space, proper internet—”
“Eric has a family starting,” Dad steamrolled right over my objections. “The apartment makes more sense for them. We’ve decided you’ll move out by the end of the month. That gives you four weeks to find something else.”
The words didn’t process at first. They sounded like dialogue from a show I was half-watching, something happening to some other unlucky woman related to these particular people.
