My half-sister got our dad’s inheritance while he just left me his old little cabin. It was a brutal reading of the will in a stuffy office in Leeds, where the air felt thick with a decade of unspoken resentment. Dad’s estate wasn’t massive, but it included his main house, his savings, and a respectable life insurance policy.
My half-sister, Meredith, walked away with all of it, leaving me with a set of rusted keys to a shack in the Lake District that hadn’t been lived in since the nineties. Meredith didn’t even try to hide her triumph as we walked out into the rain. She patted her designer handbag and looked at me with a pity that felt like a slap.
“I have kids to think about, Arthur,” she said, her voice dripping with a fake sort of concern. “You’re 42 and didn’t give him a legacy or any grandkids to spoil. The cabin can keep you warm while you figure out your life!”
I didn’t argue, and I didn’t cry.
I just smiled, tucked the heavy iron keys into my pocket, and watched her drive away in her luxury SUV. I had spent the last five years of Dad’s life being the one who took him to his chemo appointments and sat with him during the long, dark nights. Meredith only showed up for the “important” visits, the ones where photos were taken, but she was always the one he seemed to want to impress.
I drove up to the cabin the very next day, leaving the noise of the city behind. It was a tiny thing, built of dark timber and tucked away in a valley that most tourists never bothered to visit. The roof looked a bit dodgy, and the porch groaned under my weight, but it smelled like woodsmoke and old memories.
Dad used to take me there when I was a kid, teaching me how to fly-fish and how to listen to the silence of the woods. I spent forty-eight hours just cleaning out the dust and the cobwebs, finding peace in the manual labor. I didn’t have much money left in my own savings, but I felt more at home in that drafty room than I ever had in the city.
On the third day, I was sitting on the porch with a lukewarm cup of tea when my phone started buzzing incessantly. It was Meredith, and her name flashing on the screen felt like a sudden intrusion into my new sanctuary. I answered, and the sound that came through the speaker was a frantic, high-pitched sobbing.
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