I blinked and brought myself back to the present.
“You don’t have the right to stop me from coming in,” I said softly.
"Oh, but it is," Diana immediately retorted. "Your father gave it to me last month. It belongs to me now, and I don't want you anywhere near it."
A slight smile curled my lips.
“Thanks for telling me about the locks,” I said.
There was a pause. “What does that mean?”
But I had already ended the call.
The silence that followed was unexpectedly calm. The city bustled outside my window, but inside the apartment everything seemed still as I walked down the hallway toward my small study.
I knelt beside an old metal filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. Inside was a thick brown envelope, sealed years earlier with yellowing tape. My mother's careful handwriting ran across the front.
Rebecca. Beach House Documents. Important.
The word “important” had been underlined three times.
I returned the envelope to my desk and slowly opened it. Inside were neatly arranged documents, including the trust my mother had set up shortly before her death and the deed to the beach house in Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
I felt a tightness in my chest as I traced his signature with my finger.
She knew exactly what was going to happen.
Years earlier, I'd sat beside her hospital bed as she struggled to speak, overwhelmed by the weight of her illness. A faint smell of disinfectant lingered in the room, but she insisted the window be left slightly open, so she could imagine the sea breeze.
"Rebecca," he whispered, squeezing my hand. "The beach house is our family legacy. My parents built it with their own hands, and we raised you there every summer."
I remember urging her to focus on treatment plans rather than real estate, but she shook her head with quiet determination.
"Diana's wanted that house from the moment she walked in the door," my mother said softly. "She thinks of it as a prize, not a home. I won't let her."
Her longtime attorney, Evelyn Porter, stood nearby, explaining the structure of the trust as my mother signed the final pages.
At the time, the legal details seemed almost incomprehensible to me, but one thing was clear.
The house would always be mine.
My phone vibrated on the desk, jolting me back to the present.
A message from Diana appeared on the screen: “I have already notified the local police that you are not permitted on the property. Don't make yourself look bad by trying to force your way in.”
I stared at the text for a moment before forwarding it to Evelyn with a brief explanation.
His response came almost immediately: “It’s time to address this issue the right way.”
Soon after, another message arrived, from a different number.
Madeline.
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