Three days after the funeral—while sympathy cards still covered the table—my sister hauled boxes into our Connecticut house, declared she’d inherited the home and $28 million, and hissed, “You’re useless now—find somewhere else to die.” I was still on a cane; she thought the will had erased me. But at the reading, the attorney opened the real document and chuckled, “Did you even read it?” My sister went pale…

“Don’t touch me.” She pulled away, her voice rising. “My mother left me in charge. Not her. Not some neighbor who thinks she has a right to—”

“Your mother didn’t leave you in charge of anything.” Maggie’s words were quiet. Final. “Not yet.”

The room went still.

Victoria’s jaw tightened. She looked at me, then at Maggie, then at Rose, who was still standing in the kitchen doorway with her notebook.

“Fine.”

Victoria grabbed Derek’s arm and pulled him toward the door.

“Friday, Sierra. I want you out by Friday.”

The door slammed behind them.

Maggie squeezed my arm.

“Don’t you worry, honey. This isn’t over.”

I wished I could believe her.

The next morning, Derek came back alone.

I found him standing on the porch, hands in his pockets, looking like a man who had lost an argument with his own reflection.

“When I opened the door, he flinched.”

“Victoria doesn’t know I’m here,” he said quickly. “Can we talk?”

I let him in.

We sat in the living room—him on the edge of my mother’s chair, me on the couch with my cane propped against the armrest.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Look,” he started, “about yesterday. Victoria’s under a lot of pressure.”

“Pressure to throw her disabled sister out of her dead parents’ house.”

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