Immediately after my husband’s funeral, his family threw me out of the house without even giving me time to pack my things; I was sitting on the porch crying when a message arrived from my late husband’s number: “Go to this address, I need to tell you something” 

My husband’s funeral was heavy and quiet. He died during another assignment. He had worked as a firefighter for many years, and that day everyone came — colleagues, friends, relatives, neighbors. It felt as if the entire city had come to see him off.

We lived together for five years. All that time I lived with him in his parents’ house. I walked behind the coffin and could barely see anything in front of me — only the uniform, the flowers, and the faces of people saying that time heals everything. I cried without trying to hide it.

After the funeral, we returned home. I thought I would at least be able to pull myself together a little, sit in silence, gather my thoughts. But the moment we crossed the threshold, my mother-in-law and father-in-law said calmly, almost indifferently:

— You have to leave our house. You are nobody to us anymore. Only relatives can live here.

I didn’t immediately grasp the meaning of those words. I asked if I could at least pack my belongings. They didn’t answer. They simply pushed me out the door. My jacket and bag were thrown onto the porch after me.

I sat on the steps and cried. From loss, from humiliation, from pain, from everything at once. I couldn’t understand how someone could treat a person like that on the day of their own son’s funeral.

At that moment, the phone rang. The message came from my husband’s number.

“Go to this address. I need to tell you something.”

An address was listed below. I stared at the screen and couldn’t believe it. I had just seen him buried. How was this possible? But I went to the address anyway, and what I discovered there left me in real shock  Continued in the first comment 

At that address was my husband’s lawyer.

He said:

— I’m sorry, but your husband asked me to write to you from his phone. Right now I must open the will. He knew what kind of relatives he had. And he knew they tolerated you only because of one document.

It turned out that the house we lived in belonged to my husband. His parents were sure he had transferred it to them. But that wasn’t true.

My husband left everything to me. I was the legal owner of the house.

When the lawyer finished reading the will, silence filled the office. I sat there staring at one point, trying to process what I had just heard. All this time I had considered myself a guest in someone else’s house — but it was my house.

The lawyer handed me the documents and quietly said that legally everything took effect immediately.

I went outside and, for the first time that day, took a deep breath. Then I went back to reclaim what was mine.

My mother-in-law laughed at first. My father-in-law started shouting that I was making it all up. Then I showed them the documents. They turned pale.

I didn’t shout or seek revenge. I simply said they could pack their things. I gave them exactly the same amount of time they had given me — not a minute more.

They begged to stay, saying they had acted in the heat of the moment. But it was too late.