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When Anna returns home to care for her dying mother, she expects grief, not betrayal. But after the funeral, a family secret hidden beneath the floorboards forces her to question everything. In a house full of memories, one letter changes the meaning of legacy, love, and what’s truly hers.
When my mom, Marlene, passed away three months ago, I didn’t expect the grief to follow me like a second shadow.
I didn’t expect the betrayal either.
I flew home from Chicago the moment I got the call that her illness had turned. I left my job behind without hesitation. I packed a week’s worth of clothes, assuming I’d be back soon.
But I guess I knew, deep down, that I wouldn’t be back any time soon. Something in my gut had shifted the minute I heard my sister’s voice on the phone.
The last six weeks of my mom’s life were quiet, painful, and intimate in ways I’ll never forget. I was her caretaker, but more than that, I was her witness to life.
I helped her sort through her letters and bills when her hands shook too much. She kept everything in tidy folders, and I noticed once or twice that she’d update documents even when nothing seemed to change. ‘Just in case,’ she’d always say.
Some days she spoke. Other days, she just watched the wind outside the window and let me sit in silence beside her.
My sister, Caitlin, came by the house twice in the six weeks I was there. The first time, she dropped off a store-bought pie with a sticker still on it and didn’t stay long enough to take off her coat.
The second time, she rummaged through the hall closet and took a box of old yearbooks and a few pieces of Mom’s jewelry she said she “didn’t want to get lost.”
She barely looked at Mom either time.
“I just can’t see her like this,” she said at the doorway, shifting from foot to foot like the floor was too hot to stand on. “It’s just too hard, Anna. I’m not strong like you.”
I wanted to say, “It’s harder for Mom,” but the words caught in my throat and dissolved before I could form them. I was exhausted, too tired to argue and too raw to correct her.
Everyone processes pain differently, Anna, I reminded myself. Not everyone knows how to sit still inside grief.
But I did.
After the funeral, I flew back to Chicago feeling like a balloon someone had forgotten to tie down. I drifted through my apartment like a stranger. There was leftover food in the fridge that looked like an ecosystem was growing on it. The milk smelled foul and looked worse.
I remember standing in the kitchen, staring at a bag of unopened coffee beans, and realizing that I didn’t even remember buying them.
“Get it together, Anna,” I told myself in the bathroom mirror. “Mom’s at peace now, and it’s time you find your peace too.”
But peace never came.
That night, Caitlin emailed me. The subject line was cold and clinical: “Mom’s Will.”
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