“He hung up.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t sign anything. Don’t answer calls from Robert or Karen tonight. Tomorrow morning, I’m sending my lawyer to your house. His name is Marcus. He’s going to walk you through exactly where things stand legally and what your options are. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
Her voice was small, older than I remembered it sounding.
“Daisy, what Karen said to Sophia at dinner—”
“We don’t have to talk about that tonight.”
“I should have said something. I should have.”
“Mom,” I kept my voice steady. “Right now, I just need you to get some sleep and let Marcus help you tomorrow. That’s all.”
After we hung up, I sat in the dark kitchen for a long time.
I had not done any of this for the land. Not for the inheritance, not for the money, not to win. I had done it because when you are a mother, truly completely a mother, you understand at a cellular level that the world your child grows up in is shaped by the people around her.
And I was not going to let Sophia grow up watching a family that rewarded cruelty and punished honesty.
That was not the world I was building for her.
But Karen didn’t know any of this yet.
She thought she had won. She thought the phone call had scared me off. She thought she was three signatures away from everything she wanted.
She would find out differently.
The next morning, I was making Sophia’s breakfast when a car pulled into my driveway. Karen’s car.
She got out slowly, and even from the kitchen window, I could see it. The expression on her face was different from anything I had seen before. Not the usual cold confidence, not the practiced cruelty.
She looked afraid.
Sophia looked up from her cereal. “Who’s that?”
“Nobody you need to worry about,” I said.
I kissed the top of her head. “Finish your breakfast.”