My name is Riley. I’m thirty-two years old, and I work in contract administration for a commercial construction company. My job, in plain language, is turning other people’s vague promises into binding language they cannot wiggle out of later. I know exactly how words work. I know which ones protect you. I know which ones quietly ruin your life three years down the road when nobody sees it coming.
That matters, because everything that happened at the cabin came down to exactly that. Words. Whose name was on what. What an irrevocable trust actually means. And why I had been careful enough to make sure those words were in place long before my sister’s husband pulled an unfamiliar truck into my parents’ driveway with the hatch open wide.
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