I thought inheriting my grandma’s house would bring me peace. Instead, it sparked a battle I never saw coming. And the person who started it? My own cousin.
My name’s Abigail. I’m 27, a freelance illustrator. I spend my days sketching in cafés or on my back porch, coffee in hand, my dog curled up at my feet. It’s not a fancy life, but it’s mine, and I’ve come to love it.
I don’t talk much about my family. There’s not much left to talk about.
My mom died in a car accident when I was six. After that, my world turned upside down. While other kids were learning to ride bikes or going on family trips, I was packing my things and moving into a small cottage with my grandmother, Hazel. I always called her Gran.
Gran was everything to me. Her gentle voice could hush any worry, and she made the best cinnamon rolls you’d ever taste. She was stubborn, funny, warm, and sharp as a whip even in her late 70s.
She filled our quiet house with humming, always some old tune we didn’t know the name of.
It was just her and me, through it all.
After Mom passed, my dad vanished. I don’t even know where he is now. Gran never said a bad word about him. She’d just shake her head and call him “a wanderer.”
Gran’s other daughter, my aunt Marla, lived in the next town over. She had a daughter, my cousin Paige, a year older than me. We were never close. Paige acted like anything that didn’t serve her was a waste of time. She kept her nails perfect, walked with her nose up, and had this air like the world owed her something.
They’d show up for Christmas now and then, sometimes Easter, but they never stayed long. They didn’t call. They didn’t help when Gran was sick or needed a ride to the doctor. It was always me. Just me.
When Gran passed away last spring, I didn’t cry at the funeral. I’d already shed all my tears during her final weeks in hospice. When the lawyer handed me the will and I saw she’d left me the house, I wasn’t surprised. Just heartbroken, in a quiet way that lingers.
The house wasn’t grand—just a modest two-bedroom cottage with peeling white paint and a creaky porch swing. But it was full of her: the smell of baked apples and lavender, the worn crochet blanket she’d wrap around us during storms, and the faded photos of my mom in her prom dress on the mantel.
That house was her heart. And it had become mine too.
It was a gloomy Tuesday, with thick clouds hanging low, when my phone buzzed. It was Paige.
I stared at the screen, surprised. I hadn’t heard from her in months. Apart from a few tense words at Gran’s funeral, we hadn’t talked.
I answered warily. “Hello?”
“Hey,” she said, skipping pleasantries. “I need a favor. I think Grandma kept some of my papers at her house. They’re important, and I need to get them.”
I frowned, puzzled. “What kind of papers?”
“Just… documents. Birth stuff, school stuff. I don’t know. Can I come by and grab them?”
I hesitated. “Can it wait a couple of days? I’ve got a work trip tomorrow. I’ll be back Thursday.”
“No, it can’t wait,” she snapped. “Please, just leave the keys. I’ll be quick, I promise.”
Her tone made me uneasy. Paige never asked for anything without a catch. Still, she was family.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll leave them under the doormat.”
“Thanks,” she said, and hung up. No goodbye.
I was gone for one night.
When I got back, the house looked the same from the outside. The porch was untouched, and the flower pots still sat crooked, just as I’d left them. For a moment, I thought I’d been paranoid.
Then I opened the door.
The silence inside felt heavy, like the house knew something was wrong.
A sour smell hit me first—spoiled milk and something rotten. My stomach churned. I stepped inside, heart racing.
The living room looked like a disaster zone. Fast-food wrappers littered the floor. Greasy takeout containers sat open, with half-eaten burgers oozing sauce. Soda cans were scattered everywhere, and someone had crushed chips into the carpet.
My breath caught. I dropped my bag and moved down the hall, past the kitchen, toward the room I hadn’t touched since Gran died—her bedroom.
I opened the door, and my legs nearly gave out.
Red and black paint was splattered across the wallpaper, angry and messy. The bed was torn apart—feathers from the pillows floated in the air. Greasy handprints smeared the closet. Candy wrappers and takeout bags spilled from the drawers.
It wasn’t just a mess. It was vandalism.
I stood there, heart pounding, then grabbed my phone and called her.
Paige answered right away.
“What did you do?!” I choked out. “Why would you wreck the house? And Gran’s room? How could you?”
There was a long pause. Then her voice came, cold and sharp.
“Oh, don’t play innocent. You know why. Grandma left the house to you. It should’ve been mine. You don’t deserve it.”
My grip on the phone tightened. “You barely visited her! You never helped. You weren’t there.”
Her laugh cut like a knife. “Doesn’t matter. You got what I wanted. So I made sure you wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Then she hung up.
I stood there, phone still to my ear, listening to the dead line.
The room was quiet except for the soft flutter of feathers settling on the floor.
She’d done this out of pure spite. It wasn’t about papers. It was a message. A warning.
And as I looked around at the ruins of the woman who raised me, something inside me shifted.
I wanted to collapse, but instead, I rolled up my sleeves.
The next morning, I woke up sore, angry, and still shaken. But when I stepped into the hallway and smelled that awful mix of grease, rotting food, and cheap perfume, I knew what I had to do.
I headed to the hardware store and filled my cart with buckets, sponges, bleach, gloves, heavy-duty trash bags, and lemon-scented cleaner. The cashier raised an eyebrow at my haul.
“Big cleanup?” she asked.
I gave a tight smile. “You could say that.”
Back home, I tied my hair back, pulled on old jeans, and started in the living room. The stench hit me hard again, worse after the windows had been shut overnight. I gagged but pushed through, pulling on gloves and dropping to my knees.
I scrubbed the floors until my arms burned, but some stains had sunk deep into the wood. I muttered under my breath as I sprayed, wiped, and hauled bag after bag of trash to the curb.
No matter how much I washed my hands, the smell stuck to me. It lingered in the shower and even in my sleep.
By the third day, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. The paint Paige had smeared on Gran’s bedroom walls wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I scrubbed. I tried vinegar, baking soda, even random cleaning tips from YouTube. Nothing worked. The black and red streaks just spread, like scars on the wallpaper.
That room—her room—hurt the most.
I finally gave up and called painters. Two guys, Rick and Brian, showed up the next morning. They didn’t ask questions when I showed them the bedroom.
“Is this, like, a prank gone wrong?” Rick asked, eyeing the paint damage.
“No. Just someone with no respect for the dead,” I said, my voice sharp.
They didn’t say much after that. Just nodded and got to work. It cost me nearly five hundred dollars I hadn’t planned to spend, but when I walked into the room two days later and saw the clean, pale walls, I nearly broke down.
I threw out the ruined pillows and bedding. They smelled like stale fries and cheap cologne, unsalvageable. I bought new sheets, fluffed new pillows, and spread a soft, fresh blanket across the bed. But every time I smoothed it out, I saw Gran’s hands: steady, gentle, and warm.
The house no longer smelled like her. That’s what hurt the most.
The living room took longer. I rented a carpet cleaner that roared like a lawnmower and pushed it back and forth for hours. I scraped dried cheese off the armrest of Gran’s old recliner. I cried when I realized the couch was beyond saving.
I borrowed my friend Kayla’s truck, loaded the furniture, and drove it to the dump myself. A worker there helped me unload, grunting as he tossed the stained recliner onto the pile.
“This thing’s seen better days,” he said.
I nodded. “You have no idea.”
A few days later, I picked out new furniture. Simple stuff: a beige loveseat, a small coffee table, and a cozy chair that reminded me of Gran’s old one. I arranged everything and stepped back to look. It felt right. It felt clean. But I still wasn’t at peace.
Paige’s words kept echoing in my head: “It should’ve been mine.”
And I realized she thought this was over.
She thought she could wreck what she didn’t get and just walk away.
That’s when I knew what I had to do next.
I didn’t call Paige after that. I didn’t confront her or try to reason with her. I knew she’d just twist it into something ugly.
Instead, I called a lawyer. A no-nonsense woman named Michelle with sharp eyes and a tone that said she’d handled worse.
After I told her everything, I showed her the photos on my phone: the trashed furniture, the paint-smeared bedroom, the piles of garbage. I handed over every receipt—for cleaning supplies, painters, and the furniture store.
Michelle looked through the papers slowly, then met my eyes.
“This is strong,” she said. “She won’t get out of this.”
“Even if she says it’s not her fault?” I asked.
“We’ve got photos, texts, and a motive. It’ll hold.”
It took a few weeks, but then I got the call. The court ruled in my favor. Paige was legally responsible for the damage. She had to pay me back for every penny I’d spent fixing Gran’s house.
That was the moment I smiled. For the first time since this nightmare started.
But I didn’t want to just send her the ruling. That felt too easy. I wanted her to feel the weight of what she’d done. I wanted her to see it, to know this was her mess—and she’d own it.
I bought a plain cardboard box and slipped the court papers into a large envelope. I added copies of the receipts. Then I tied the box with a bright pink ribbon and taped a small card to the top.
“From the home you destroyed.”
I drove to her house one evening just before sunset. Her car wasn’t in the driveway; she wasn’t home. I placed the box carefully on her porch, right in front of the door, and walked away.
I wasn’t even ten minutes down the road when my phone rang.
I picked up, calm as could be.
“WHAT IS THIS?!” Paige screamed, her voice shrill through the speaker.
“That’s a court order,” I said. “You’re responsible for the damage you caused. You’re paying for every trash bag I hauled, every wall I repainted, every pillow you ripped open. All of it.”
“You’re crazy!” she snapped. “You went to court over this?!”
“Yes, I did.”
She cursed, throwing out threats, calling me dramatic and obsessed.
“You think you’ve won?” she spat.
I paused, then answered quietly.
“No. Gran won. Because you didn’t take her house from me. And now you’ll pay for trying.”
Before she could reply, I hung up.
Weeks passed. Paige tried to appeal, but it didn’t work. The judgment stood, and the payments started coming in small checks, never early, always with a snarky note like “Enjoy, Princess.” I didn’t care. I cashed them anyway.
Each envelope felt like a reminder that she’d lost, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
Meanwhile, I could finally breathe again.
The house no longer felt violated. It felt calm and steady.
Some nights, I’d sit in the living room with a cup of tea, the lights low, the TV off. I’d run my hand over the armrest of the new chair and listen to the quiet. It wasn’t the same. It never would be. But it was mine. And it was safe.
Sometimes, I’d walk into Gran’s room, sit on the edge of the bed, and whisper.
“Got her back, Gran,” I’d say. “She didn’t win.”
One day, I opened the bottom drawer of her old desk. I placed the framed court ruling beside her favorite Bible and the photo of her holding my mom’s hands, both smiling on my mom’s wedding day.
It felt like putting something broken back together.
I didn’t need to gloat. I didn’t need to tell anyone what I’d done. But that ruling reminded me of something Gran always said: “You’re stronger than you think, Abigail.”
And for the first time in a long time, I believed it.
