Some sort of truce had been brokered between Matt and Tyler by the time Cassie returned. Mom looked relieved, Matt looked harried, and Tyler looked concerningly smug. He brushed past Cassie on his way out of the kitchen. Mom heard her phone buzzing on its charger in the other room and went to answer it. Matt sat down at the table with a heavy sigh and began tapping away at his laptop as Cassie put away the groceries. “Do I want to know?” she asked, returning to the table.

“Whether you want to or not,” Matt replied wearily, “you need to.”

“Oh god—did Tyler convince Mom to move into some crapshack?”

Matt sighed again. “No, but it turned into a renegotiation about distribution of proceeds from the house.”

Cassie went cold. “What?”

“So the original plan was that Mom would get half, and the three of us would evenly split the other half. That, plus retirement savings, plus Dad’s pension, plus social security, should keep Mom in decent shape for the rest of her life.”

“Right.”

“Tyler just got Mom to agree to a fixed sum of the proceeds from the sale of the house rather than fifty per cent.”

Cassie went even colder. “How much?”

Matt rubbed his neck. “Well, it works out to about half of what she’s likely to get for the house, honestly. So ideally, no change for her.”

Cassie slumped in relief. “So he just screwed the two of us over, is that it?”

“Not quite.” Matt typed some more on his computer then spun it around to show her. “We estimated we’re likely to get this much from the sale of the house. So there’s Mom’s half, here’s my sixth, and there’s your sixth. All now in static dollar form, rather than a percentage.”

“And Tyler’s sixth?”

“Well…” Matt spun the computer back around again. “He gets the remainder.”

Cassie pondered this for a moment. “He thinks we can actually get more for the house than the estimate you showed me.”

“Presumably.”

“So after you, me, and Mom have taken our allotted dollar amount, he’ll wind up with more than a sixth.”

“That appears to be his thinking, yes.”

“And Mom agreed to this?”

“He pulled the grandchild card.”

“Jesus.” Cassie stared out the window. “How can he do this? Aren’t you the executor?”

“I’m instructed to follow any changes requested by Mom,” Matt said quietly. “Dad and I talked about it a lot, and… he knew the risks. He was lucid till the very end.”

“Those changes weren’t requested. They were coerced.”

“She is of sound body and mind. She is allowed to be convinced. My hands are tied, Cass.”

“I know.” Cassie stood up and hugged her brother’s shoulders from behind. “If I’d thought I wouldn’t just make it worse, I’d have stayed to argue.”

Matt chuckled darkly. “Thank you for your timely departure.” He nodded at Cassie’s shopping. “What’s in the bag?”

“Art supplies.”

Matt looked mildly surprised. “Are you drawing again?”

“Well, there’s paint, too. Watercolor. It’s been a while. I miss it.” Technically, she hadn’t told a single lie. “Do you need me to sign anything for this change in plans?”

“Nope.”

“Okie doke.” She dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “Thanks for duking it out with Tyler.”

Matt just grunted.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Mom reappeared in the kitchen, pocketing her phone, and began making herself a cup of tea. “So,” she said, with studied nonchalance, “Anybody special in your lives, kids?”

Cassie immediately knew who had buzzed Mom’s phone. Probably the entire church now knew that Cassie had been found chuckling to herself in the condom aisle.

“Nothing past a first date, and not for a few months,” Matt said breezily. “Too busy.”

“Me neither,” Cassie lied quickly. But she could feel her face beginning its betrayal. Both her mother and brother eyed her. “Hookups don’t count,” she added defiantly, hoping to confuse the issue, and stomped up the stairs before her blush could go nuclear.

She would have to be very careful about sneaking the art supplies into the bramble.

Cassie’s own phone buzzed just as she set down the bag of art supplies; it was from work, and the notification thumbnail did not look promising. Cassie debated ignoring it, but the thought of some crisis spiraling out of control was too unpleasant. She stood hunched over her bed, thumbing out the last of her response, when there was a knock on her doorjamb.

“One sec!” She hurriedly appended her signature and tossed the phone carelessly onto her bed. “Sorry, work. Again. Did you—” Cassie turned around to see Matt standing dumbstruck in her doorway, face white, staring silently at a point just to her side. Casse instinctively looked where he was staring but saw nothing out of the ordinary. “What—”

“Did you make that?”

For a moment, Cassie had the horrific notion that Matt must have seen the nude sketch of her somehow. But he wasn’t looking under the bed. “Make what?”

“That.” He pointed at her headboard—at the blackberry-thorn circlet that hung upon its corner.

“No.” The denial was out before she realized what she had admitted. Now it was Cassie’s turn to go white.

This wasn’t right. Matt shouldn’t be acting like he understood what he had really asked, or what her answer really meant.

She waited for his demands, accusations, for whatever emotional upheaval he was clearly experiencing to be regurgitated in a torrent on her rug, but instead he turned around and walked away without another word. Cassie heard the door to his bedroom open and close, followed by complete silence.

Her phone buzzed. She ignored it. All she could think to do was close her own door, sit down on her bed, and stare out the window. An indeterminate amount of time later, she heard Matt come back out, walk down the stairs, and leave the house. Then his car engine purred to life and he drove away. Cassie’s phone buzzed again, and then again. She fumbled it from the bed, set it to Do Not Disturb, and put it down again without reading a single message.

He knew. Matt knew. Cassie wasn’t sure exactly what he knew, but clearly he knew it.

The house phone rang, both in the master bedroom and in the kitchen—Cassie had forgotten it was all on the same loop—and Mom picked it up. Mom’s side of the conversation sounded very confused. “Cass?” she called after a moment.

“What?”

“It’s for you.”

Cassie was still sitting on her bed with the door shut. She opened the bedroom door, flabbergasted. “What?”

“Some lady from some plant society says they’ve been trying to reach you for ten minutes?”

Cassie’s stomach inverted itself. She raced down the stairs and grabbed the phone with both hands. “Hello?”

“Hello, this is Dr. Evelyn Morales from the American Society of Plant Biologists. We’re trying to reach Dr. Cassandra Harris?”

“Speaking.” Cassie’s voice shook.

“Apologies, we used your emergency number since the primary one listed didn’t seem to be going through and the voicemail was full. We’re calling to inform you that your proposal, Field Evaluation in Ecoregions 2-4 of Apomixis and Propagation in Rosaceae Genera, was selected as a Permaculture Genomics grant winner in Competitive Area 2 for the full amount requested. Congratulations!”

Cassie gaped at her mother, mouth open, clutching the phone so hard it creaked. “Are you serious?” she blurted, practically shoving the receiver into her mouth. Mom had clapped her hands on either side of her face, eyes wide and mouth making a tiny O.

“Absolutely! We’ll be publishing the list of awardees online shortly, but we always call the winners to tell them personally. It’s one of the highlights of my job,” she added, smile evident in her voice.

“I—wh—thank you!” Cassie laughed incredulously. “I can’t believe it. Thank you so much! This is wonderful!”

“You’re most welcome, congratulations again! You’ll get some follow up emails shortly, as well as another call to square away some of the funding details, but in the meantime I’ll leave you to celebrate.”

“Thank you!” Cassie beamed at the phone. “Thank you!” She barely got the receiver back into the cradle, she was trembling so severely. She leaned against the wall for a moment, then looked back at her mother and said stupidly, “I need to clear out my voicemail.”

Mom squealed and clasped her in a tight hug. “Congratulations, Cass! I knew you could do it!”

“I didn’t,” Cass laughed, squeezing her back just as tightly. “It was a hell of a long shot, I can’t believe it! Dad will—”

It was like getting punched in the stomach by her own words; she gasped at what she had just said. Dad will nothing. Dad’s dead. Dad’s dead.

Dad’s dead.

Head and heart overflowing with grief and fear and pride, Cassie burst into tears. She cried so hard she couldn’t breathe. Too much had happened this hour, this day, this week.

“I’m sure Dad’s just as proud of you as I am, sweetheart.” Mom rubbed Cassie’s back as she sobbed into her shoulder. “He never doubted you for a second either.”

Cassie nodded, grinding snot into her mother’s blouse. It was just too much. Blinded by tears, Cassie let go of Mom and tottered up the stairs. It wasn’t even noon yet, but she was too overwrought to stay conscious; without bothering to do more than kick off her shoes, she climbed onto her bed, burrito’d herself in her patched-up blanket, and fell into a deep and immediate sleep.