She felt her breath shallow. The room seemed too bright. Too quiet. Too… watched.
Steven’s chair scraped as he shifted. Catherine’s nails clicked lightly on the table. Michael’s phone buzzed, and he didn’t even have the decency to silence it with embarrassment—he simply looked down and typed, his thumbs moving quickly, already spending money that wasn’t fully his yet.
Peggy stared at Marcus and heard herself ask in a voice that sounded far away, “What about me?”
Marcus swallowed. “Peggy…” He paused, then continued reading, because it was his job to carve the wound clean.
The mansion to the stepchildren. The bank accounts to the stepchildren. The investments to the stepchildren.
And to her: a rusty iron key inside a brown envelope, and an address written in Richard’s meticulous hand as if it were a chore to remember.
Marcus slid the envelope across the table with two hands, almost reverently, as though it were fragile. He couldn’t quite look at her.
Peggy stared at the envelope for a moment before touching it. It was the color of dried leaves. It looked heavy, but not with money—heavy with insult.
Steven stood first, already moving toward practicalities with the ease of someone who’d never feared losing anything.
“We’ll need to discuss the timeline,” he said smoothly. “We’re listing Brookline immediately. The market’s strong. We have a stager coming next week.”
Catherine gave Peggy a look that wasn’t sympathy so much as satisfaction disguised in silk.
“At least you’ll have a roof over your head,” she said sweetly. “Daddy did leave you something.”
Michael didn’t even look up. “Thirty days,” he muttered, half to himself, already texting someone about the house.
Peggy picked up the envelope with steady fingers she didn’t feel. Her mind was doing something strange—part of it wanted to scream, to stand and slap the table and demand an explanation, and part of it was… numb, as if her body had decided emotion was too expensive to spend right now.
She stood.
Her legs held.
She walked to the door without saying a word to Steven, Catherine, or Michael.
“Peggy,” Marcus called behind her, voice urgent. “Please. If you need anything—if you have questions—call me.”
She nodded once without turning.
She made it to the parking garage. She found her car. She sat in the driver’s seat of her ten-year-old Honda Civic, hands on the steering wheel, and stared straight ahead.