When Jason’s phone rings in the middle of the night, he finds his daughter crying. During the conversation, he learns that her landlord is forcing her to leave the apartment. Jason decides to teach the landlord a lesson…
I got a call late at night, and it was so unexpected that I answered it without even thinking about who might be on the other end. Grumbling, I pressed the green button and put the phone to my ear.
‘Dad,’ my daughter Lily sobbed into my ear.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, immediately sitting up and slipping my feet into my slippers. ‘Tell me, Lily, what happened?’
“My landlord found out that I got a promotion at work. I was sitting on the porch with Nolan, and we were laughing about it and making toasts. And, of course, he heard it from the front house. Since then, he’s been talking about renovations and rent increases.”
‘Okay,’ I said slowly, trying to understand despite my sleepiness.
Of course, it was a disgusting way to take advantage of people, but it was no reason to cry.
‘But, dear, why are you crying?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.
Everything in me wanted to run to the child. But I did nothing until she gave me a reason.
‘After I didn’t respond to the rent increase, he secretly dumped several old banned chemical containers in the backyard and then accused me of violating the lease agreement for storing hazardous materials on the property,’ she said.
‘What?’ I exploded. ‘That’s illegal!’
‘And he gave me two days to move out,’ she continued.
I was furious. My daughter had transformed the backyard from a barren plot into a blooming oasis. She had poured her heart into every plant, every flower, and every vegetable.
She had always been like that. Lily wasn’t the kind of child who sat at home playing with toys. She preferred to stay outside and get her hands dirty, trying to learn how everything grew.
‘It’s so much fun, Dad,’ she said to me once when I was mowing the lawn and little Lily was planting flowers.
‘There are some worms in there,’ she said, pointing to them. ‘But I planted the seedlings anyway.’
Her mother hated that. She wanted Lily to have freshly ironed clothes, clean nails, and a hairstyle that stayed in place.
‘You need to stop encouraging that behaviour, Jason,’ my wife Jenna would say. ‘Encourage her to be a little lady.’
‘No way, Jenna,’ I would always say. ‘Let this sweet girl be herself.’
Now, after everything Lily had done to make the garden her own space, all I wanted to do was try to preserve her hard work.
‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ I said, and a plan was already forming in my head.
‘How, Dad?’ she asked.
‘Because we’re going to take care of this. And we’re going to do it together.’
The next evening, I arrived at Lily’s with my truck and a few friends. We were armed with flashlights and a healthy dose of righteous anger.
‘All right, guys,’ I said. ‘We’re going to do this for my daughter. We’re going to teach Jack a lesson. As the man of the house, you can’t go around taking advantage of young women.’
We thoroughly searched the hideout Lily had created in the backyard.
‘Dad?’ Lily asked when she realised we were there. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I said. ‘We’re going to teach your landlord a lesson. He can’t do that. So we’re going to take everything apart. I’ll take your plants home.’
Lily yawned and stretched.
‘I’ll leave you, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’ll rest a little, and then when the sun comes up, I’ll come back to pack my things. I’ll stay with Nolan until I find a place to live. He’ll be here soon with more boxes.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘We’ll be quiet, I promise.’
As we worked, every lovingly tended plant, every painstakingly made flower bed disappeared. By the time we were done, the once-blooming garden had been reduced to an abandoned patch of dirt, a stark contrast to the lush photos Jack, the homeowner, had already posted for the new listing.
‘Thanks, guys,’ I said. ‘You can go. I’ll just help Lily pack up. I’ll pick up my truck later, Malcolm.’
I wasn’t done yet. There was still a lot of work to be done.
Inside the house, we rearranged the furniture to highlight all the flaws.
The cracks in the walls were not concealed by Lily’s artwork. The missing tiles were visible and could not be hidden by any kitchen appliances.
‘There’s nothing we can do about the mould on the bathroom ceiling,’ Lily told me. ‘But I told the landlord that we need to deal with it.’
We replaced all the light bulbs with very bright blue and white ones, which made the whole room look gloomy and unattractive.
While we were working, Lily and I talked about how she had lived in this house.
‘I remember when I first moved in,’ she said with a hint of nostalgia in her voice. “The backyard was just dirt and concrete. And I didn’t think anything could grow here. But over time, it did. And every time I felt homesick, I would come out here and plant something new or tend to what was growing.”
‘And you did it,’ I replied, smiling. ‘You turned this place into paradise.’
She sighed.
“It’s so unfair. I did everything right, and he still found a way to ruin it all.”
‘We won’t let him win,’ I assured her. ‘It’s just a setback. A new adventure awaits you. Nolan’s house is a good stop for now, but I know he’s serious about you. Maybe the next step will be a new home together.’
I left my daughter confident that her landlord would get a good beating the next day.
‘Dad, can you come over?’ Lily asked me on the phone early in the morning. ‘Please be here when I have to hand over the keys to Jack.’
‘I’ll be right there,’ I said, spreading butter on my piece of toast.
Lily was packing shoes into a box when Jack burst into the room.
‘What the hell, Lily?’ he demanded. ‘Where are the plants? The flowers? The photos on the internet clearly show what this place should look like!’
He took a deep breath, and his face turned the colour of an overripe tomato.
Lily, the epitome of innocence, winked at him.
‘What plants, Jack?’ she asked. ‘The backyard has always looked like this, haven’t you noticed?’
She gestured towards the neglected garden bed, a mischievous smile playing on her lips.
Jack, caught red-handed in his devious plan, burst into incoherent threats of property damage. I stepped towards him, pointing to the open cracks.
‘Do you want to talk about the damage?’ I said, my voice cold.
‘Let’s discuss the cracks in the walls, the missing tiles and the mould in the bathroom. Now you can see everything clearly, can’t you?’
Jack’s eyes widened as he looked into the bathroom.
‘This is clearly sabotage!’ he shouted.
‘No,’ I replied, pulling out the photos I had taken when Lily moved in.
‘Everything was exactly like this when she moved in. If anything, it’s neater now. Nothing is missing, Jack.’
Jack tried to regain his composure, but the three couples who came to view the house that day saw it in its damp, unattractive state. They all left without submitting an application.
Meanwhile, a few months later, Lily found a new place with a landlord who appreciated her green thumb, not just the potential profit. As my daughter settled into her new home, I couldn’t help but feel proud.
Lily and I sat on the porch of her new home and looked out at the spacious yard that would soon become her next gardening project.
‘Dad, I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, her eyes shining with relief and excitement. ‘I was so scared, but you knew exactly what to do.’
I smiled and squeezed her hand as we rocked on the porch swing. ‘You did the hardest part, sweetheart. You stood up to him. And now you have a clean slate.’
What would you have done?
