*“I hated you not because of who you were, but because of what you reminded me of. I saw myself in you—young, ambitious, opinionated. I used to be like that, until I gave it all up for marriage, for appearances, for people who never said thank you.
When you married my son, I feared he would ruin you the way his father ruined me.”*
“So instead of loving you, I judged you. I pretended you weren’t enough, when the truth was, you were more than I ever dared to be. And I regret that.”
I pressed the paper to my lips, my chest tight. All those years of coldness, and only now, in death, did she finally say what I had needed to hear.
Then came the last lines:
“The necklace was mine once. A gift from a man I loved before I met my husband. His name was Lucas—the L. I added the T later, for the daughter I never had. I wanted a girl I could raise to be strong. I never had her. But in a strange way, I see her in you.”
I didn’t sleep much that night.
The Key That Opened the Past
A week later, her lawyer called us in for the reading of the will. Most of her possessions were simple: the house, a modest savings account, some jewelry.
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