The room smelled like lavender and grief. I was sitting on the carpet in my mom’s bedroom, holding her favorite old sweater—the one that still carried her scent. That’s what finally did me in. Not the funeral. Not going through the will. A simple sweater.
That’s when Neil, my partner, found me. “You don’t have to go through this alone,” he said softly.
We started going through her things together—worn-out sweatpants she’d stitched and mended countless times, small echoes of the tough years before everything changed thanks to a mysterious inheritance. She never explained where the money came from. Just said, “It was from someone who owed us both.”
Then the doorbell rang. The mail carrier handed me a faded envelope addressed to my mom. Inside was a message, written in sharp, angry handwriting:
