My father remained where he was, near the porch steps. He stared down at Mom’s roses. Some of them were upright, petals unfurling bravely in the cold morning air. Others were leaning, their roots clearly disturbed, clumps of soil scattered around them.
“I never knew,” he said, his voice almost lost under the sound of the surf. “About the trust. About you coming up here. Victoria always said… she said you didn’t care. That you were moving on. That… that your mother had made things difficult with the house and it was better if we just… worked around it.”
“Victoria said a lot of things, Dad,” I replied softly. “Maybe it’s time you started questioning them.”
He looked up at me then, his eyes brimming with something that looked suspiciously like shame.
“Your mother would be proud of you,” he said. “Standing your ground like this. She was always telling me you had more of a spine than either of us.”
I swallowed around the tightness in my throat. “I learned from the best.”
Officer Martinez inclined his head toward me. “If there are any further issues, Miss Parker, don’t hesitate to call,” he said. “We have everything documented.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
As the patrol cars pulled away, their lights fading into the fog, I was left standing there with my suitcase, the gulls crying overhead, and my father watching me from the porch.
It felt like standing at a crossroads.
“Are you… staying?” he asked quietly.
I looked up at the large front windows and saw my own reflection faintly superimposed over long-ago memories: Mom waving from the door, younger me racing down the steps toward the sand, Dad carrying a cooler.
“Yeah,” I said. “For a while, at least.”
He nodded. “Maybe we can… talk. Later.”
“Maybe we can,” I agreed.
As the property manager’s truck pulled into the driveway a few minutes later, I walked up the porch steps, my hand trailing along the railing. The wood was new, smooth under my fingers. I missed the old chipped paint, the grooves worn by decades of hands, but there would be time for that. Time to bring pieces of the past back.
For now, it was enough to step over the threshold with the knowledge that this place—this house, this porch, this impossible view of ocean and sky—was finally, unequivocally, mine.
Or rather, ours.
Mom’s and mine.
The fog lifted slowly over the next few days, both outside and inside my chest.