After my mother passed, I expected to inherit her house—what I didn’t expect was the letter she left behind: I had three days to leave my husband or lose the house forever.

Living with Mom had been both refuge and burden. While I cared for her, my husband Jason did nothing—lazy, cold, and increasingly cruel. The night before she died, Mom begged me to leave him. “You’re drowning, pretending you’re swimming,” she said.