Just a lid.
I opened it and found another letter.
Shorter this time.
Alyssa,
If you’re reading this, then you’ve chosen yourself.
That’s the only inheritance I ever wanted to give you.
I sat down at the table and pressed my fingertips to the paper, grounding myself in the reality of it. The betrayal, the confrontation, the signatures, the key—it all felt like a fever dream. But here, in this quiet house, my grandmother’s presence made it real in the best possible way.
Emma sat across from me and whispered, “What do we do now?”
I looked around.
At the covered furniture. The quiet rooms. The land stretching beyond the windows like possibility.
And I felt something I hadn’t felt when I sold my company.
Not relief.
Not victory.
Hope.
“We breathe,” I said softly. “We rest. We figure out what comes next… without them.”
Outside, the wind stirred the trees, and the leaves whispered against each other like applause.
I thought about my parents back in that suburban house, signing away their rights with shaking hands. I thought about Brooke, probably spiraling already, trying to figure out how to keep her comforts. I thought about Uncle Ray and the rest of them, scrambling like vultures denied their meal.
They would tell stories about me.
They would paint themselves as victims. They would pretend I’d gone insane, that I’d been manipulated by a lawyer, that I’d been greedy, that I’d abandoned them.
Let them.
For once, their narrative didn’t get to define my reality.
I stood up and walked to the window. The pond glinted in the sunlight. The dock waited like an invitation. The air outside looked clean enough to drink.
Simon’s words returned to me: Observe.
