This reclaimed it in fact.

A house does not truly become yours again the moment the deed is enforced; it becomes yours again in the small domestic acts, the washing of a glass, the wiping of a counter, the quiet putting-right of a space that strangers had made their own.

Julian’s scotch going down the drain, the glass rinsed and set in the rack, was the first of a thousand tiny gestures that would, over the following weeks, scrub every trace of them out of the place and make it, once more, my mother’s home and not their stolen kingdom.

I did not do it for symbolism.