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“Dad, you’ll need to move to the back room. Andrés’s parents are moving in, and they need the master bedroom.” That was it. No discussion. No hesitation. What Natalia didn’t know was that, in the exact moment she asked me to leave the room where I’d slept for forty-five years, I made the most irreversible decision of my life—one I hadn’t told anyone yet. I decided to sell the house. But to understand why, you need to know how we got here—and who I was before I was treated like an inconvenience in my own home. Three years earlier, Natalia divorced her first husband, Gustavo, after twelve years of marriage. They had two children together—Sebastián, then fifteen, and Martina, thirteen. The separation shattered the family, especially the kids, who couldn’t understand why their parents suddenly couldn’t live under the same roof. At the time, I had been living alone in my four-bedroom home since my wife Carmen passed away five years earlier. When Natalia asked if she and the children could stay with me “for a little while,” I didn’t hesitate. “Just a few months, Dad,” she said. “Until I find a place for the three of us.” A few months became a year. A year became two. Just when I thought my life might finally return to some quiet balance, Natalia met Andrés—a 42-year-old divorcee with a son from a previous marriage. At first, he seemed like a good man. Polite. Hardworking. Kind to my grandchildren. “Dad, Andrés is incredible,” Natalia told me. “He’s the man I’ve been waiting for.” What she didn’t say was that Andrés didn’t come alone. He had a ten-year-old son named Bruno—and two aging parents who needed constant care. Roberto and Miriam were 75 and 73. Roberto had been a bank manager before retiring. Miriam had spent her life as a homemaker. According to Andrés, they had sold their house to downsize, but something went wrong with the apartment they bought. “Don Arturo,” Andrés told me when we first met them, “my parents are in a very difficult situation. Legal problems. They had to leave. They have nowhere else to go.” Natalia didn’t even look at me before offering a solution. “Dad, don’t you think they could stay here with us for a while?” I reminded her that five people were already living in the house. “There would be seven now,” I said. “It’s temporary,” she insisted. “Just until they figure things out.” Temporary. That word again—the one she always used when she’d already made up her mind. What bothered me wasn’t helping Andrés’s parents. It was that my opinion no longer mattered. She didn’t ask. She informed. “They can use the guest room,” Natalia said. “They’ll be comfortable.” The guest room was the smallest room in the house. An old bed. A narrow closet. A window facing the neighbor’s wall. Not exactly ideal—but I agreed. Because she was my daughter. Because I still believed her. Because I thought “temporary” meant what it used to. Then Roberto and Miriam arrived one SatuTHE MORNING I WAS EVICTED FROM MY OWN ROOM
