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.

The last sentence seemed to hit her harder than the rest, maybe because it was so close to the core of her mistake. She had not simply tried to take the house. She had acted on the assumption that I had already surrendered it.

Diana lifted her chin. “I improved the house. I kept it alive. Your mother froze it in time like some kind of shrine.”

“My mother loved it.”

“And I made it usable.”

I laughed once, incredulous. “For whom?”

“For family.”

“Yours,” I said.

Madeline pushed back from the table so abruptly her chair legs screeched. “Can everyone stop talking like I’m not here?”

I looked at her. “Then say something true.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. For a second she looked much younger than the woman who had texted me the night before with such practiced cruelty. Then she turned toward Diana.

“Did Dad know?” she asked.

Diana didn’t answer.

“Mom.”

Diana’s eyes flashed. “Your father knew enough.”

“Did he know it was Rebecca’s?”

“He knew your grandmother wanted complicated arrangements.” She shot a look toward Evelyn. “And he knew there was no point arguing with a dying woman.”

The sentence hung there, ugly and naked.