Jack and I have a relationship, but communication between us is far from ideal even though I adore him. His mother, Mary, despises me and tries her best to end our relationship.

Our father passed away when I was a teenager and Jack was 20. In the years after his death, my mother and I helped my paternal grandmother to stay alive. I would often run errands and check in on her every couple of days to see what she needed.

If I was busy, my mother would fill in and be there for her. Jack and his family had nothing to do with this, even though they knew we could use the help.

When I got older, I went to study in a different country. I fell in love with this place and decided to make a life for myself here, so it was only on rare occasions that I got to return to my hometown.

Because of the distance I have to cover to reach my hometown where granny lives, I asked Jack, who lives not too far from her house, to check on her weekly. He was to bring her food and help her with tasks around her home. I was shocked when he requested an address — he had not been bothered to know that much about her.

A few months after we agreed he would come to check on her, I came to visit my granny. She had always been a spririted woman with a cheery attitude and boundless energy; however, when I arrived at her place, she was already finding it difficult to walk.

When the pandemic started raging all over the world, borders were closed, effectively canceling out any plan I had to visit my granny in our hometown. So I reached out to Jack in an attempt to get him to help my grandmother until the borders were reopened.

He once more agreed, and for a while, everything seemed to go well. Then one day, out of the blue, Jack called to tell me I would need to return to care for granny as he no longer wanted to do it.

I tried to rationalize his actions, wondering why he had so sharply refused to help, but try as I did, I could not. I worried about granny for most of those months, and as soon as the borders were reopened, I hightailed my way to my hometown.

One day, I ran into a friend of ours. She let me know that Jack’s mother, Mary, had poisoned his mind against me. She also told me that Mary had been doing so since my birth, but Jack had always ignored her.

Now he was paying full attention to his mother and had become a stranger to me. Mary apparently told him I could hold my own and needed no help, so he refused to communicate with me. She encouraged him to collect money from our dad but nothing more, so Jack was also not close to him until he died.

It turns out the money I had left Jack for cleaning up granny’s home was spent on himself, and those I sent him to get groceries for her had also gone to his pockets.

It was later that he discovered that grandma wrote her will thirteen years ago when our father passed and bequeathed the house to me. Grandma did this because she knew that my mother and I had never owned a home, and she wanted us to stop feeling the need.

Jack had his own apartment, just like his mother, so grandma knew they were well off. They had tried to persuade my granny to remove me from her will; however, she refused. Mary had been furious, and she ordered her son to seize all communications with me.

Another friend of ours told me that my half-brother lost all his money because of his severe gambling addiction. Because of that, his wife kicked him to the curb, and his venomous mother refused to take him back into her home, so he now has to live with friends. It made me a firm believer in karma.

What can we learn from this story?

• Greed breeds destruction. Mary and Jack had been very greedy towards Joan’s inheritance. Had they been of better characters, they most probably could work something, and everyone would have ended up living happily.
• Good is always rewarded. Being a good person always has its rewards. Karma never fights for bad people, and it only worked for Joan because she remained good even when other relatives had wronged her.

If you enjoyed this story, you might like this one about a woman who was betrayed by her own sister to help their evil father.