🧾 PART 4
Adelaide sat down with her grandchildren, Skyler and Jace.
She told them calmly:
“You are old enough to decide where you want to live.”
The room fell silent.
Phillip looked confident.
Melinda folded her arms.
Then Skyler spoke first.
“We’re staying with Grandma.”
Jace nodded immediately.
No hesitation.
No confusion.
Years of watching their grandmother be disrespected had quietly shaped them more than anyone realized.
Phillip looked devastated.
Melinda furious.
But it was too late.
The illusion had broken.
Within weeks, Phillip and Melinda moved out.
And for the first time in years, the apartment finally felt like home again.
That evening, Adelaide walked to the old record shelf.
She pulled out the album George bought the day they finished renovating the house decades earlier.
Music filled the living room.
Soft at first.
Then louder.
And as Adelaide danced slowly with her granddaughter in the middle of the room, something inside her returned.
Not youth.
Not the past.
Herself.
Because home is not just a place you pay for.
It is the place where you are seen.
And at sixty-five years old, Adelaide finally remembered:
A queen does not ask permission to sit on her own throne.