My stepmother called just as the day was folding into evening, her voice dripping with a satisfaction so sharp I could almost see the smile stretching across her face. She told me, with deliberate precision, that I would never set foot in the family beach house again—that every lock had already been changed.

Evelyn stood and began gathering papers. “Good,” she said.

“Good?”

“You stopped negotiating with ghosts.”

I laughed once and wiped my face. “Is that how you comfort people?”

“It is how I respect them.”

She stayed another two hours. Together we photographed every room, every obvious alteration, every missing fixture. She called a clerk. She called an appraiser. She called someone in town who knew someone at the local registry office and could get us confirmation by the afternoon that no sale paperwork had been filed yet, which meant Diana and my father had been at the planning stage, not the completed-betrayal stage. Small mercies, though my life had taught me that the word mercy usually meant only not yet.

By noon Evelyn was gone again, promising to return for the hearing in three days and reminding me to document everything.

Then I was alone.

Truly alone.

The beach house in late morning had a particular kind of silence. Not empty, exactly. Layered. Wind through dune grass. Distant surf. Pipes ticking faintly as the day warmed. The wood itself making old-house sounds that always felt less like settling and more like remembering.