“What’s going on?” I asked, tightening my grip on the strap of my guitar case.
Before Cheryl could answer, a tall, sharp-looking man in a tailored suit stepped into the doorway behind her. He adjusted his glasses and glanced between Cheryl’s panicked face and mine.
“Miss Morison?” he said calmly. “I’m Arthur Sterling, senior partner at your father’s law firm. We’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. Unfortunately, it seems your stepmother ‘misplaced’ your contact information.”
Cheryl forced out a thin, nervous laugh and grabbed my arm with clammy fingers.
“Oh, Arthur, don’t be ridiculous!” she said quickly. “She just went camping with friends to grieve. I was welcoming her home. We’re very close, aren’t we, honey?”
Her grip tightened, nails digging into my skin. The warning in her eyes was unmistakable.
I pulled my arm away.
“I don’t know who you are,” I told the lawyer, “but I wasn’t camping. She threw me out two days ago. Said I wasn’t family anymore.”
The color drained from Cheryl’s face.
She looked like she might collapse.
Mr. Sterling nodded slowly and opened the leather folder in his hands.
“That,” he said, “is exactly what your father feared might happen.”
He turned his icy gaze toward Cheryl.
“As stated in the Protection Clause of your late husband’s will: ‘Should my daughter be removed from the family home or denied access to her inheritance by my spouse, the spouse’s share of the estate is immediately revoked and transferred entirely to my daughter.’”
Cheryl’s knees buckled.
“No… no, you can’t do that!” she cried. “It was a misunderstanding! I was grieving!”
“The terms are absolute,” Sterling replied, snapping the folder closed.
He gestured toward the security guards standing beside the SUVs in the driveway.
“The house, the vehicles, and the accounts now belong solely to Miss Morison. You have thirty minutes to pack a bag and leave the property, Cheryl.”
His voice hardened.
“Or the police will escort you out.”
Cheryl’s scream echoed across the porch as the guards stepped forward.
But I didn’t stay to watch.
I walked past her—past the fake tears, the greed, the years of pretending—and stepped back inside my father’s house.
I set my guitar down in the hallway.
For the first time in five years, I was finally home.
And the air felt clear again.
