I received the call late at night; it was so unexpected that I answered it without even thinking about who could be on the other end. Groggily, I clicked the green icon and held my phone up to my ear.

“Dad,” Lily, my daughter, sobbed into my ear.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, immediately sitting up and getting my feet into my slippers. “Tell me, Lily, what’s happening?”

“My landlord found out that I got a raise at work. I was sitting on the porch with Nolan, and we were laughing about it and toasting. And of course, he heard it from the front house. Ever since, he keeps talking about renovations and higher rent.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, trying to understand despite the grogginess from sleep.

Sure, it was a disgusting way to make money off people, but it wasn’t something to cry about.

“But sweetheart, why are you crying?” I asked, trying to keep my own voice steady.

Everything in me wanted to run to my child. But I wouldn’t do anything until she gave me a reason to.

“After I had no reaction to the rent increase, he secretly threw some old, prohibited chemical containers into my backyard and then accused me of violating the lease by storing hazardous materials on the property,” she said.

“What?” I exploded. “That’s illegal!”

“And he has given me two days to move out,” she continued.

I was fuming. My daughter had transformed that backyard from a barren plot into a blooming oasis. She poured her heart into every plant, every flower, and every single vegetable.

She had always been like this. Lily wasn’t the type of child to sit inside and play with her toys. She preferred to stay outside and get her hands dirty, trying to discover how things grew.

“This is so much fun, Dad,” she told me one day when I was mowing the lawn and little Lily was planting flowers.

“There’s a few worms there,” she said, pointing. “But I still planted the seedlings anyway.”

Her mother hated it. She wanted Lily to have freshly pressed clothing, clean nails, and hair that stayed in place.

“You need to stop enabling this behavior, Jason,” my wife, Jenna, would say. “Encourage her to be a little lady.”

“Not a chance, Jenna,” I would always say. “Let this sweet girl just be herself.”

Now, after everything Lily had done to make her garden her own space, all I wanted to do was try and save her hard work.

“Don’t worry, honey,” I said, a plan already forming in my mind.

“How, Dad?” she asked.

“Because we’ll sort this out. And we’ll do it together.”

The next evening, I showed up at Lily’s place with my truck and a few friends. We were armed with flashlights and a healthy dose of righteous anger.

“Right, guys,” I said. “We’re going to do this for my daughter. We’re going to teach Jack a lesson. That as a landlord, you cannot go around and take advantage of young women.”

We meticulously dismantled the entire backyard haven that Lily put together.

“Dad?” Lily asked when she realized that we were there. “What’s going on?”

“Hi, darling,” I said. “We’re going to teach your landlord a lesson. He cannot do this. So, we’re going to take everything apart. I’ll take your plants home, too.”

Lily yawned and stretched.

“I’ll leave you to it, Dad,” she said. “I’m going to rest for a little bit and then get back to packing up the place when the sun comes up. I’m going to stay with Nolan until I find a place. He’ll be here with more boxes soon.”

“Go on,” I said. “We’ll be quiet, I promise.”

As we worked, every lovingly tended plant, every painstakingly built bed, vanished. By the time we were done, the once-flourishing garden was reduced to a desolate patch of dirt, a stark contrast to the lush photos Jack, the landlord, had already posted for the new listing.

“Thanks, guys,” I said. “You can leave. I’ll just help Lily pack. I’ll pick up my truck later, Malcolm.”

I wasn’t done. There was still more work to be done.

Inside the house, we rearranged the furniture to highlight all the faults.

The cracks in the walls were not hidden by Lily’s art pieces. The missing tiles were left out in the open without any kitchen appliances to cover them up.

“Nothing can be done about the ceiling mold in the bathroom,” Lily told me. “But I have been telling the landlord that we needed to sort it out.”

We replaced all the light bulbs with very bright blue-white ones, making the entire place look stark and uninviting.

As we worked, Lily and I talked about her time in the house.

“I remember when I first moved in,” she said, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. “The backyard was just dirt and concrete. And I didn’t think that anything could grow here. But eventually it did. And every time I felt homesick, I would come out here and plant something new or tend to whatever was growing.”

“And you made it happen,” I replied, smiling. “You turned it into a paradise.”

She sighed.

“It just feels so unfair. I did everything right, and he still found a way to ruin it all.”

“We’re not going to let him win,” I assured her. “This is just a setback. You’ve got a new adventure waiting for you. Nolan’s place is a good stop for now, but I know that he’s serious about you. Maybe a new house together is going to be the next step.”

I left my daughter’s place feeling confident that her landlord would get a really good wake-up call the next day.

“Dad, can you come over?” Lily asked me on the phone early that morning. “Please be here when I have to hand over the keys to Jack.”

“I’ll be there soon,” I said, buttering my slice of toast.

Lily had me packing her shoes into a box when Jack stormed in, livid.

“What the hell, Lily?” he demanded. “Where are the plants? The flowers? The pictures online clearly show what this place is supposed to look like!”

He sighed deeply, his face turning the color of a particularly overripe tomato.

Lily, the picture of innocence, blinked at him.

“What plants, Jack?” she asked. “The backyard has always looked like this, haven’t you noticed?”

She gestured toward the desolate patch, a sly smile playing on her lips.

Jack, caught red-handed with his deceitful plan, spluttered some incoherent threats about property damage. I stepped in, pointing at the exposed faults.

“You want to talk about damage?” I said, my voice cold.

“Let’s discuss the cracks in the walls, the missing tiles, and the mold in the bathroom. You can see everything clearly now, can’t you?”

Jack’s eyes widened as he looked into the bathroom.

“This is clearly sabotage!” he yelled.

“No,” I replied, pulling out the photos I’d taken when Lily moved in.

“This is exactly how the place was when she moved in. If anything, it’s tidier now. Nothing is missing, Jack.”

Jack tried to regain his composure, but the three couples who came for the viewing that afternoon saw the house in its raw, unappealing state. They all left without putting in an application.

Meanwhile, after a few months, Lily found a new place with a landlord who appreciated her green thumb, not just the potential for profit. As my daughter settled into her new home, I couldn’t help but feel proud.

Lily and I sat on her new porch, looking out at the spacious yard that would soon become her next gardening project.

“Dad, I can’t thank you enough,” she said, her eyes bright with relief and excitement. “I was so scared, but you knew exactly what to do.”

I smiled, squeezing her hand as we swung on the porch swing. “You did the hard part, kiddo. You stood up to him. And now, you’ve got a fresh start.”