A small envelope fluttered out.
Sealed with Grandma’s lavender-patterned tape, inside were stock certificates, account summaries, and a single key taped to an index card. In her looping handwriting: For when you’re ready.
I wasn’t ready. But the next morning, I took it to the bank. They brought out a safe-deposit box and left me alone. Inside were property deeds I’d never heard of, decades of careful investments, and the deed to the land beneath her house. My mother thought she had inherited the home. But Grandma had left the ground itself to me—quietly, deliberately.
I cried harder than I had at her funeral. Not for the money, but for the message: I saw you. I trusted you.
With the inheritance, I bought the house back—land and all—and transformed it. I ripped out the old carpet, polished the floors, filled the rooms with sunlight. I painted the door the soft green of Grandma’s favorite cardigan.
