The only other connection I had with her was through the phonebook, with my phone number scribbled on it. But she barely called, and I didn’t want her to, either.
For 15 years, I rarely thought about her.
I got married to my wonderful boyfriend David, welcomed two amazing kids, and life just rolled on.
Then, one day, my phone rang, and everything changed.
“Carol, this is Mr.
Higgins, Linda’s attorney.”
I paused, confused. The name felt distant, like an echo from a life I’d deliberately forgotten. “Okay… why are you calling me?”
“I’m sorry to inform you that Linda passed away last week from lung cancer,” he said gently.
For a moment, I was too stunned to respond. Memories flickered like old photographs: Linda’s dismissive glances, her quick corrections, and the perpetual distance between us.
I hadn’t even known she was sick.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. We’d been so disconnected that even her terminal illness had slipped past me completely.
“I see,” I finally managed.
“What does this have to do with me?”
“She named you in her will. Linda left you her vacation home.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Her vacation home?”
“Yes, the one that belonged to your father and was passed on to her after his death.
It’s valued at $2.5 million,” he explained. “Her daughters Amanda and Becca were left $5,000 each.”
I sat down hard on the couch, my head spinning. The numbers seemed surreal.
All those years of feeling like an afterthought, and now this? Linda had barely been a presence in my life, yet she’d left me her most valuable asset and almost nothing for her own daughters. Why?
Before I could process it, my phone buzzed with incoming texts. The screen lit up with family drama, as if Linda’s death had suddenly reignited old tensions.
My husband, David, leaned over to read one of them.
His jaw tightened. “Amanda’s accusing you of manipulating Linda. Classy!”
“She’s calling me a thief,” I said, staring at the words.
The accusation felt achingly familiar… the same dismissive tone I’d heard throughout my childhood, the same narrative of me being the problem.
“That’s nothing,” he muttered, scrolling through Becca’s online post. “She’s ranting about ‘backstabbers destroying families.’”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
Destroy families? We were barely a family to begin with. Those connections had been threadbare, held together by nothing more than shared last names and occasional holiday gatherings.
I sighed, setting my phone aside. “Why would Linda do this? We weren’t even close.”
David shrugged, his eyes soft with understanding.
“Maybe you need to find out.”
I nodded. Something told me this inheritance was more than just a financial transaction. It felt like an unfinished story, waiting to be understood.
So, I decided to dig through the house to see if I could find any clues.
The vacation home looked exactly as I remembered when I entered. Nestled on the edge of a serene lake, it had always been my dad’s favorite place.
We used to fish on the dock for hours, talking about everything and nothing.
Standing in the doorway, I felt like a ghost of my former self. Each step was a journey through time, my fingers tracing familiar surfaces, collecting memories like dust.
