“I don’t know yet.”
He shrugged.
“You don’t need to.”
That sentence stayed with me.
You don’t need to.
As if earning my own money was something unnecessary.
As if wanting something that belonged to me was selfish.
A few weeks later, a friend told me she knew a woman who needed someone to clean her house three mornings a week.
I took the job.
It wasn’t glamorous.
I cleaned bathrooms.
I vacuumed floors.
I dusted shelves.
I washed windows.
I changed sheets.
Sometimes I came home with aching shoulders and sore hands.
But there was something deeply satisfying about it.
When I finished a room, I could look at it and know exactly what I had accomplished.
And, more importantly, the money went into an account in my own name.
The first time I deposited my paycheck, I sat in my car outside the bank and smiled.
It wasn’t much.
But it was mine.
I started with one client.
Then another.
Eventually, I had three regular houses.
One belonged to a retired couple.
One belonged to a young family with two children.
And the third belonged to a man named David Harrison.
That name meant nothing to me at first.
