She was sitting at the dining table with Hannah and the kids, celebrating something I didn’t care to know about. They all looked so happy, so comfortable, while my children had spent the weekend being treated like second-class citizens in their own grandmother’s house.
“What is going on here?” I demanded, my voice shaking with barely controlled rage.
Margaret looked up at me with that familiar condescending smile. “Oh, Ava. You’re early. The kids are fine.”
“Fine?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You fed them pizza crusts while everyone else ate real food!”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “You’re being dramatic. They ate just fine.”
“Get out,” Margaret said suddenly, standing up from her chair. Her face had gone cold. “Get out of my house and take your spoiled brats with you!”
The words hit me hard. I wanted to scream at her, to tell her exactly what kind of person she was, but I couldn’t fall apart in front of my kids. They’d been through enough.
I gathered Lily and Jacob and walked out of that house with my head held high, even though inside I was crumbling. The entire drive home, I held back tears because I didn’t want them to see me break.
They needed me to be strong.
That night, I lay awake thinking about everything. About all the years of mistreatment. About how Ethan had finally seen the truth with his own eyes. About whether we could ever have a relationship with his family again.
The next morning, my phone rang. It was Margaret.
“Ava, darling,” she said in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard from her. “I was hoping you could come by this morning. There’s something important we need to discuss.”
The sudden change in her tone felt wrong. Alarm bells went off in my head. “What’s this about?”
“Just come over, please. It’s important. Ten o’clock?”
Against my better judgment, I agreed. When I pulled up to her house an hour later, my stomach was in knots. Something was definitely off.
I walked into the living room and froze. Margaret was sitting on the couch, but she wasn’t alone. There was a man in a gray suit sitting across from her, a leather briefcase on the coffee table between them.
“Mrs. Ava,” the man said, standing up to shake my hand. “Thank you for coming. I’m Robert, attorney for your late father-in-law.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Please, sit down,” he said gently. “I’ve come to read Walter’s will.”
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