The day they returned, Richard entered first, dragging his suitcase through the foyer.
“Maya!”
I was sitting at the dining table.
A folder lay closed in front of me.
Celeste came in behind him wearing dark sunglasses and carrying shopping bags.
Brielle was complaining about the flight.
Then she saw me.
“Why are you sitting there like that?”
Richard dropped his keys into the bowl by the door.
“Did you clean the basement?”
I almost smiled.
He’d crossed an ocean and that was still the first question he asked me.
“Sit down,” I said.
All three stopped.
Celeste slowly removed her sunglasses.
“Excuse me?”
“I said sit down.”
Richard’s face hardened immediately.
“You don’t give orders in my house.”
I opened the folder.
That was the moment his expression changed.
Not because he could read the papers from across the room.
Because he recognized the letterhead.
His eyes went from the folder to me.
Then back to the folder.
“Where did you get that?”
Celeste looked at him.
“Richard?”
I slid a copy of the trust summary onto the table.
“I found a letter in Mom’s Bible.”
Nobody moved.
Brielle gave an awkward laugh.
“Okay?”
Richard didn’t laugh.
“Maya,” he said, softer now, “there are things you don’t understand.”
The sentence was so familiar that I nearly admired his instinct.
For fifteen years, every inconvenient truth had been something I supposedly didn’t understand.
“Then explain it.”
He glanced at Celeste.
“Your mother made complicated arrangements.
I handled everything after she died.”
“Did she leave me the house?”
His jaw tightened.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
Celeste stepped closer to the table and picked up the top page.
Her eyes moved rapidly across it.
“What is this?”
Richard reached for it.
She pulled it away.
“Richard.
What is this?”
He turned on me instead.
“You’ve been going through private documents?”
“These are documents about my trust.”
“You have no idea how much I’ve sacrificed maintaining this property.
