Chapter 4
The next few days were a whirlwind.
Robert filed the necessary paperwork. We petitioned the court for an injunction to stop the sale of the store.
We filed a police report about the assault. The officer who took my statement was professional and kind. He photographed my injuries. He interviewed Maya, who’d seen me right after it happened.
He told me they’d press charges against my mother. Assault with a deadly weapon. The soup bowl, apparently, counted as a weapon when it was full of boiling liquid.
The news spread fast.
Small towns talk.
People started calling me. Texting. Coming up to me in the grocery store.
Some were supportive. They told me they’d always suspected something was wrong. That Vanessa was lazy. That my mother had changed after my father died.
Others believed my mother’s lies.
They called me ungrateful. A troublemaker. A bad daughter.
My mother had been busy. She’d told everyone her version of the story.
That I’d been unstable since my father died. That I’d been stealing from the store. That I’d attacked her and she’d acted in self-defense.
That I was trying to take everything from her.
Some people believed her.
It hurt. It hurt more than I thought it would.
But I had my evidence. I had my lawyer. I had Mr. Henderson. I had Maya.
And I had the truth.
The court granted the injunction. The store couldn’t be sold until the case was resolved.
My mother was furious.
She called me, screaming.
“You think you’ve won?” she shouted. “You think a piece of paper is going to stop me? I will ruin you, Olivia. I will make sure you never work in this town again. No one will trust you. No one will hire you. You’ll be nothing.”
I hung up on her.
I blocked her number.
Vanessa texted me.
You’re going to regret this. You have no idea what you’re up against.
I blocked her too.
The store was in limbo. My mother tried to run it herself, but she didn’t know how. She’d never been involved in the day-to-day operations.
Suppliers started calling. They weren’t getting paid. Deliveries were missed. Customers were complaining.
Mr. Henderson kept me updated.
“It’s falling apart,” he told me. “Your mother doesn’t know what she’s doing. Vanessa doesn’t even show up anymore. Regular customers are leaving. They’re going to the big chain store across town.”
I felt a pang of sadness. This was my father’s store. His legacy. And it was crumbling because of greed and pride.
But I also knew this was part of the process. The worse things got under my mother’s management, the stronger my case became.
Robert told me we needed to get our evidence organized. We needed expert witnesses. We needed to be ready for trial.
I worked every day. Organizing documents. Making phone calls. Meeting with Robert.
I also started seeing a therapist. Maya insisted.
“Carrying all this anger and hurt isn’t good for you,” she said. “You need to process it. For you.”
She was right.
Dr. Chen—no relation to my lawyer—helped me work through everything. The grief of losing my father. The betrayal of my mother. The years of putting everyone else’s needs before my own.
“You’ve spent your whole life trying to earn love that was never freely given,” she told me in one session. “It’s not your fault that your mother couldn’t love you the way you deserved. That’s her failure. Not yours.”
Those words hit me hard.
I cried in her office that day. More than I’d cried since my father died.
But I left feeling lighter.
I was starting to understand that I wasn’t the problem.
I wasn’t selfish. I wasn’t difficult. I wasn’t ungrateful.
I was a daughter who’d loved her family. Who’d tried her best. Who’d been hurt by the people who were supposed to protect her.
And that wasn’t my fault.
One afternoon, I got a call from a woman named Mrs. Goldberg. She’d been a customer at the store for over thirty years. She’d known my father since the beginning.
“Olivia,” she said. “I heard what’s happening. I want to help. I saw your mother and Vanessa meeting with a business broker a few weeks ago. I heard them talking about selling the store out from under you. I’ll testify if you need me.”
“Thank you,” I said. Tears filled my eyes.
More people came forward.
Vendors who’d seen Vanessa stealing. Customers who’d witnessed my mother’s temper. Employees who’d been there when the money started disappearing.
May you like
My case was getting stronger every day.
And my mother was getting more desperate.
