The other lawyer’s pause did not last long. He set the email chain on the table, squared up the edges, and kept reading. My lawyer did not fill the silence. Neither did I. My daughter slept in the carrier at my feet. Four days had turned into ten. The incision still pulled when I sat up too straight.
He finished the last page and closed the folder, as though closing it could change what was inside. My mother had refused to redirect the inheritance. My mother-in-law had asked her to anyway. My sister-in-law’s name sat in those messages as the person who needed more, written before anyone had thought to ask whether I even wanted a house of my own. The down payment on the home they had promised to my sister had come from the money my mother had tried to move.
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