My stepmother called just as the day was folding into evening, her voice dripping with a satisfaction so sharp I could almost see the smile stretching across her face. She told me, with deliberate precision, that I would never set foot in the family beach house again—that every lock had already been changed.

“No,” Evelyn said, appearing beside me like judgment in a wool coat, “but concealment or disposal of a beneficiary’s personal property after being put on notice of ownership may create several kinds of legal trouble, some of which I suspect will sound very ugly when spoken slowly in court.”

Madeline’s bravado wavered.

I took one step toward her. “Where is it?”

Her chin lifted. “In the garage.”

Diana snapped around. “Madeline.”

“What?” she burst out, voice cracking. “You said she wasn’t coming back. You said none of this mattered because Dad was going to sell the place anyway.”

The hall went still.

Even Diana seemed to realize, a half second too late, what had just been said out loud and in front of people who wrote reports.

Evelyn’s eyes sharpened. “Sell the place?”

Madeline swallowed. “I didn’t mean—”

“You did,” I said softly.

She looked at me then, and for the first time that morning I saw something besides inherited arrogance in her face. I saw fear. Real fear. Not for me. Not for the house. For the consequences now closing in around her mother and, by extension, around the life Madeline had always assumed would remain padded against consequence forever.