We sat outside on a bench, the winter wind nipping at our hands. He told me his business had failed, and our parents were furious with him — still angry that I’d “kept the money.”
“I didn’t let you do anything,” I said.
It wasn’t quite an apology, but it was something. A beginning.
The Truth Grandma Protected
Months later, I received another letter — no return address. Inside was Grandma’s original will, not the version my parents had shown me.
This one left me everything: the house, the land, her savings, and her art. Inside was a single handwritten note:
“If they try to change the story, tell your own.”
As it turned out, my parents had forged a version of the will and tried to pass it through probate. But Grandma, always one step ahead, had mailed the real one to a lawyer in another state, instructing him to deliver it to me a year after her passing.
I could have gone public. I could have pressed charges. But instead, I mailed them a copy with a note that simply said, “I know.”
They never replied.
The House Grandma Built
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