“The house is not yours to ban me from,” I said quietly.
“Oh but it is,” Diana replied immediately. “Your father signed it over to me last month. It belongs to me now and I do not want you anywhere near it.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
“Thank you for telling me about the locks,” I said.
There was a pause on the line. “What does that mean?”
But I had already ended the call.
The silence that followed felt strangely peaceful. The city hummed outside my window, but inside the apartment everything felt still as I walked down the hallway toward my small home office.
I knelt beside an old metal file cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer. Inside lay a thick manila envelope sealed years ago with yellowing tape. My mother had written across the front in careful letters.
REBECCA. BEACH HOUSE DOCUMENTS. IMPORTANT.
The word important was underlined three times.
I carried the envelope back to the desk and opened it slowly. Inside were neatly organized papers including the trust document my mother created shortly before she died and the official deed to the beach house in Cape Ann Massachusetts.
My chest tightened as I ran my finger over her signature.