She tried to take my mother’s beach house

I hung up before she could finish.

The quiet that followed was almost loud. The city hummed outside: sirens in the distance, someone shouting down on the street, the faint thump of bass from a neighboring apartment. Inside, it was just me, the soft whir of the refrigerator, and the echo of Victoria’s smug declaration.

Banned from the beach house.

I slipped the phone into my pocket and walked down the hallway to my tiny home office. It was more of a nook, really—an old wooden desk, a second-hand chair, a tower of mismatched file boxes leaning precariously in the corner. A plant I kept forgetting to water drooped over one edge of the window.

I dropped to my knees in front of the file cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer.