She and Mom had grown up together. She’d been around a lot when I was little. After Mom died, she’d come to visit, bring casseroles, tell stories. Tracy hadn’t liked her—too mouthy, too observant—so she’d slowly pushed Elise out.
But Elise had a Facebook account, a sharp memory, and screenshots of Tracy’s hypocritical posts going back years.
When Tracy posted a long rant about how her “ungrateful stepdaughter was throwing her family out on the street,” Elise commented:
“Didn’t you tell everyone at book club that you’d kick her out ‘the minute she turned eighteen’ because you were sick of her attitude? I still have the messages if you’ve forgotten.”
Toast.
If Tracy’s country club “friends” had been politely distant before, they went radio silent after that. Apparently, “gold-digging stepmother gets evicted from house she thought she’d inherit” wasn’t a good look for their brand.
Tracy scrambled.
She called every lawyer she could find in a fifty-mile radius.
The first two told her, kindly, that she didn’t have a case.
By the fifth, word had spread. Lawyers talk. No one wanted to take on a frivolous case against a twenty-two-year-old whose grandparents had set up a rock-solid estate plan.