She sighed as if my questions were making an inconvenient morning even longer.
“Does it matter? He’s gone.”
Dad lowered his fork.
Then Vanessa moved to the part of the conversation she clearly cared about.
“Grant and I are handling everything. There’s really no reason for you to come to the house.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed.
“The locks are being changed this morning,” she continued.
From somewhere near her phone, I heard Grant laugh.
“Why are the locks being changed?”
“Because Grant and I found Dad’s papers. He left the house to us. The truck too. The accounts. Everything else.”
Dad and I stared at one another.
Then Vanessa delivered the sentence she had apparently been saving.
“You were specifically excluded.”
Grant laughed louder.
A moment later, his voice came closer to the phone.
“You’re finally out of the family.”
Dad’s fingers tightened around his coffee mug.
Grant kept talking.
“No more showing up every few months and pretending you’re the devoted daughter.”
That part was familiar.
For years, Vanessa had told anyone willing to listen that I was the daughter who had “run away.”
What she meant was that I had moved three states away after accepting a job I could not afford to turn down.
To Vanessa, distance was proof of disloyalty.
