She said the listing had been active since January, with photographs taken while I was away visiting my sister. I asked her why her mother would list my entire property when she didn’t own the orchard. She said her mother had told the agent the land belonged to my son because her father had “given it to him years ago.” Then she showed me a screenshot of the listing, and there it was—my house, my garden, and every plum tree clearly visible in the photographs. The asking price was nearly three times what my son had paid for his own house. My granddaughter said she only found out because the agent had accidentally emailed the listing to her while asking for updated family information.
I called the agent and asked who had authorized the listing. She immediately apologized and said she had been told my son and his wife were the owners of the entire property. I asked whether she had ever seen a deed, and she admitted she had only received a copy of an old tax document and a handwritten agreement. My granddaughter then told me her mother had been telling everyone for months that I would be moving into a smaller house after the sale. I realized they hadn’t been planning a pool anymore—they had been planning to sell everything underneath it. I contacted the county records office that afternoon and requested the complete chain of title.
The records confirmed what I already suspected: my name was still on the deed for the house and the orchard, and my son owned only the parcel he had purchased separately years earlier. The listing was removed before the weekend, and the real estate agent apologized after seeing the actual records. My son called me furious and said his wife had already spent money preparing the property for sale. I told him that was unfortunate, but none of it gave them the right to sell something they didn’t own. My granddaughter stayed with me that summer and helped me pick the plums, just as I had once taught her when she was little. Her mother wanted to sell the land my father planted, my husband protected, and I had lived from for decades—but the one person who finally told me was the granddaughter they thought wouldn’t understand.
