Nobody Looked at You During the Will Reading… Until Your Name Was Called for Everything That Was Left

Which means he anticipated this room. These faces. This exact moment when people who barely saw you would suddenly begin calculating what it means that you now hold something they want.

You sit very still.

It is an old instinct. In childhood, stillness was survival. Stillness made you harder to notice when Valeria wanted to mock your thrift-store dresses or when Mariana wanted the guests to admire her polished stepdaughter instead of the awkward girl who preferred books to parties. Stillness made you smaller, and smaller often felt safer.

But today, stillness does something new.

It makes them nervous.