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.

I made a noise that may have been agreement.

Madeline exhaled. “I’m not calling for sympathy.”

“I assumed not.”

“I just…” Her voice faltered, and when she spoke again it was quieter. “I keep going back over things. Not just this. Years of things. And I don’t know what was true.”

I closed my eyes briefly.

This, I thought, was the real inheritance. Not property. Revision. The slow confusion that takes root when someone controls the family version of events long enough.

“There were good things,” I said. “I’m not going to lie and say every memory you have is poison. That would just be a different kind of rewriting.”

She was silent.

“But there were also lies,” I went on. “And selective stories. And moments she framed to make herself central or injured or generous when she wasn’t. You’ll have to sort them one by one.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

Another pause.

“Dad wants me to tell you he’s had a health scare,” she said finally.

I laughed once—not cruelly, just startled by the predictability. “Of course he does.”

“It’s real,” she said quickly. “Nothing catastrophic. Some heart thing. Stress-related. He had tests.”