Mom’s laugh drifted through my memory, warm and clear, wrapped in salt air.

“Alex, look at that wave! Bigger than you were at five, I swear.”

I blinked away the ghost of the past and focused on the present.

“The house isn’t yours to ban me from, Victoria,” I said quietly.

“Oh, but it is,” she replied, and I could hear the triumphant smile in her voice. “Your father signed it over to me last month. It’s mine now, and I don’t want you anywhere near it. You’re just like your mother, you know. Always thinking you’re entitled to everything.”

That jab was so predictable it barely stung anymore.

A small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth, one she couldn’t see but I enjoyed anyway. “Thanks for letting me know about the locks,” I said.

There was a beat of confused silence. “What does that—”

I hung up before she could finish.

The quiet that followed was almost loud. The city hummed outside: sirens in the distance, someone shouting down on the street, the faint thump of bass from a neighboring apartment. Inside, it was just me, the soft whir of the refrigerator, and the echo of Victoria’s smug declaration.

Banned from the beach house.

I slipped the phone into my pocket and walked down the hallway to my tiny home office. It was more of a nook, really—an old wooden desk, a second-hand chair, a tower of mismatched file boxes leaning precariously in the corner. A plant I kept forgetting to water drooped over one edge of the window.

I dropped to my knees in front of the file cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer.

There it was: a thick manila envelope, its edges worn, the flap sealed with a strip of aging tape that mom herself had pressed down. My chest tightened as I lifted it out. On the front, in neat handwriting that still made my throat close up, was my name.

ALEXANDRA – BEACH HOUSE – IMPORTANT

The word IMPORTANT was underlined three times.

I sat back on my heels, the faded carpet pressing patterns into my skin, and gently opened the envelope. The smell of old paper rose up, mingling with the faint scent of coffee in the apartment. Inside, neatly stacked and clipped together, was the trust document my mother had created three months before she died. Behind it, the deed to the beach house.

I traced a finger over my mother’s name.

She’d known. She’d known Victoria too well.