My father flung my grandmother’s savings book onto her open grave as if it were worthless.

“It’s useless,” he said, brushing dirt from his black gloves. “Let it stay buried.”

The entire cemetery fell silent.

Rain ran down my cheeks—maybe tears, maybe not. I was twenty-six, in the only black dress I owned, standing among relatives who had spent the whole funeral whispering that Grandma had “wasted her last years” raising me.

My father, Victor Hale, looked at me with the same cold smile he wore when I was twelve and begged him not to sell Grandma’s house.

“You heard the lawyer,” he said. “She left you that little book. Not money. Not land. A book. Typical old woman nonsense.”

My stepmother, Celeste, let out a soft laugh behind her veil.

My half-brother Mark leaned closer. “Maybe there’s a dollar in it. Buy yourself lunch.”