When my stepmother snuck into my late mother’s beloved lake house with stolen keys to throw a party, I thought I’d have to be the one to teach her a lesson. But fate — or maybe karma — had something far better prepared.
When my mom passed away, she left me one thing that embodied her soul: the lake house she had bought long before meeting my dad. It wasn’t just a property. It was her safe haven.
As a child, summers meant trips to that lake. Mom would pack a simple lunch, and while I skipped stones or built sandcastles, she set up her easel to paint watercolors of the shore.
“Lana, baby,” she would say, brushing greens and blues onto her canvas, “this place holds my best thoughts. Someday, it’ll hold yours too.”
On rainy days, we curled up in the window seat with cocoa, listening to raindrops tap against the roof while she read aloud. She even let me rummage through her paints, proudly hanging my messy finger-paintings on the fridge as though they were real art.
The summer I turned fifteen was the best. We stayed there a whole week. She taught me to flip her famous blueberry pancakes on the old stove, and every morning we ate them on the porch, watching the sun cast golden light across the water. At night, by the fire pit, she confessed:
“This house saved me. Whenever life got heavy, I came here to remember who I was.”
When she died a year later, the house became sacred to me. I didn’t rent it out or share it. I kept it just as she left it — even down to the embroidered pillow she’d stitched with the words, Still waters, strong heart.
But my father moved on quickly. Within a year, he married Carla.
Carla was artificial in every sense: surgically altered, sugar-coated in her speech, sharp underneath the syrup. What made it unbearable wasn’t her presence — it was how she erased my mother’s. She redecorated the house, tossing out Mom’s quilts and canvases, replacing everything with cold, lifeless furniture.
She never insulted my mother outright. Instead, she delivered “sweet” jabs disguised as compliments:
“Oh, I could never wear patchwork skirts like she did. Takes a special kind of confidence.”
Or, “She was whimsical… almost like she lived in fantasy instead of reality.”
Her friends joined in, giggling over wine about “hippie Earth-mom” and mocking her herb garden or crystal collection. Once, I overheard Carla laugh about Mom’s art: “Abstract? More like adult finger painting.”
I never said a word, though the anger ate at me. I was just a teenager, still grieving.
By the time I turned 21, I inherited the lake house and laid down one firm rule: no one else was allowed there.
“That house is sacred,” I told my dad. “It’s how I stay close to Mom. Nobody goes there but me.”
Dad nodded, but Carla just smiled that plastic smile and cooed, “Of course, honey. Your mother’s little fairy cottage should be preserved.” The way she said fairy cottage made my blood boil.
Every June, on the anniversary of Mom’s death, I went there alone. It was my ritual: flowers, tears, silence. It was my way of keeping her close.
But this year, when I pulled into the driveway, something was wrong. Cars were parked out front. Music blared. Laughter spilled out of the windows. And then I heard Carla’s voice.
Through the glass, I saw her in the kitchen, pouring expensive wine. Her friends lounged outside in swimsuits. One of them used Mom’s embroidered pillow as a footrest. My chest ached as though I’d been punched.
Worse still, I heard them mocking her memory inside her house:
“She probably had dreamcatchers everywhere.”
“Oh, and incense! As if sage could fix real problems.”
“Her art was basically finger painting for adults.”
I staggered back. Nothing had been broken to get in, which meant Carla had a key.
Later, I learned how. She’d lied to Dad, claiming she needed my apartment key to water plants while I was away on business. She used it to steal the lake house key from my desk.
When I confronted her, she didn’t even deny it.
“Lana, you’re overreacting. It was just a small gathering. That house is wasted, sitting empty.”
“You stole my key,” I said coldly.
“I borrowed it,” she waved me off. “Besides, you weren’t even using it.”
“It was the anniversary of my mother’s death.”
She sighed. “Oh, honey, wallowing in grief isn’t healthy. Your mother wouldn’t want you stuck in the past.”
That was it. I didn’t yell. I didn’t cry. I played it calm. Then I called my lawyer.
What Carla didn’t know was that I had installed a full security system the year before. Cameras inside and out, audio recordings, cloud storage. I showed everything to Jennifer, my lawyer, who happened to know my mom from art classes.
“She was a light,” Jennifer told me softly. “We’ll do this right.”
The footage spoke for itself: Carla unlocking the door, her guests drinking, mocking, breaking a stained-glass piece my mother had made. Even better, her text messages came out in discovery:
“Party at the hippie hut 😏”
“She’ll never know, she does her grief thing after the weekend LOL”
“Time to see how the other half lived… or HALF-BAKED 😂”
They weren’t so funny in court.
Karma delivered its own blow when Carla’s lawyer dropped her after learning my mom had once helped his wife through postpartum depression. “I can’t represent someone who would desecrate the woman who saved my wife,” he told her.
In the end, Carla faced criminal charges for trespassing and theft, a civil judgment for damages, and a restraining order keeping her away from me and the lake house. I had the locks changed, upgraded security again, and sent her a bill for the broken stained-glass: $1,800, with a note — Still waters, strong heart. But even strong hearts demand justice.
She never responded.
Two months later, she was gone from my father’s life too. Seeing those texts and videos finally broke through his denial. He realized he had married a woman who mocked the memory of the wife he once loved and tormented his daughter on her most painful day.
Now, the lake house is mine again — my sanctuary, my mother’s spirit preserved. I visit, I grieve, I heal. And every time I sit on that porch, I whisper, I love you, Mom. I’ll always protect this place for you.