When Jason’s phone rings in the middle of the night, he finds his daughter crying. During the conversation, he discovers that her landlord is forcing her out of her place. Jason decides to give the landlord a lesson…
I received the call late at night; it was so unexpected that I answered it without even thinking about who could be on the other end. Groggily, I clicked the green icon and held my phone up to my ear. “Dad,” Lily, my daughter, sobbed into my ear.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, immediately sitting up and getting my feet into my slippers. “Tell me, Lily, what’s happening?”
“My landlord found out that I got a raise at work. I was sitting on the porch with Nolan, and we were laughing about it and toasting.
And of course, he heard it from the front house. Ever since, he keeps talking about renovations and higher rent.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to understand despite the grogginess from sleep. Sure, it was a disgusting way to make money off people, but it wasn’t something to cry about.
“But sweetheart, why are you crying?” I asked, trying to keep my own voice steady. Everything in me wanted to run to my child. But I wouldn’t do anything until she gave me a reason to.
“After I had no reaction to the rent increase, he secretly threw some old, prohibited chemical containers into my backyard and then accused me of violating the lease by storing hazardous materials on the property,” she said. “What?” I exploded. “That’s illegal!”
“And he has given me two days to move out,” she continued.
I was fuming. My daughter had transformed that backyard from a barren plot into a blooming oasis. She poured her heart into every plant, every flower, and every single vegetable.
She had always been like this. Lily wasn’t the type of child to sit inside and play with her toys. She preferred to stay outside and get her hands dirty, trying to discover how things grew.
“This is so much fun, Dad,” she told me one day when I was mowing the lawn and little Lily was planting flowers. “There’s a few worms there,” she said, pointing. “But I still planted the seedlings anyway.”
Her mother hated it.
…The story doesn’t end here, it continues on the next page 👇
