“Dead asleep,” Lydia replied, confidence lacing her words. “I put extra ambient in his nighttime tea. He’s out until at least nine.”
It was almost laughable, the precision of her miscalculation. An hour earlier, I had watched her at the kitchen counter, her back turned to me, carefully crushing the pills with the bottom of a spoon. I had seen the powder swirl into the steaming chamomile tea she brought me with a smile I once thought was sincere.
I had poured it down the sink, washing away the deception with it, and climbed into bed, ready to listen.
“How much can I take?” her mother asked, her voice tinged with anticipation.
“All of it,” Lydia said. “$127,340. That’s what the app showed this morning when I checked his phone.”
Hearing the number spoken aloud felt different. It wasn’t just a figure on a screen. It was the legacy of my grandfather, his life’s work compressed into digits, the inheritance he left me after years of hard work at his dry-cleaning shop.
“That’s real money,” Constance said, not bothering to hide her excitement.
