Tabitha’s face filled the laptop screen as she bent over my father’s chair and pressed a pen between his fingers.
“Just sign where Kyle marked it,” she said.
“Paige will never know the difference.”
My father looked smaller than I remembered.
Cancer had hollowed his cheeks and weakened his hands, but his eyes remained sharp.
He let the pen drop onto the desk.
Calvin snatched it up.
“You promised me this house,” my ex-husband said.
Dad stared at him.
“I promised you nothing.”
Beside the study door, my brother shifted uneasily.
Kyle looked thinner than he had at the funeral.
His shoulders were hunched, and he kept glancing toward the hallway as if expecting someone to walk in.
“We’re trying to protect what you built,” Kyle said.
“By taking it from my daughter?”
“Paige already has enough,” Calvin replied.
“She got the sympathy, the marriage settlement, and now she expects the entire estate.”
My breath caught.
The divorce settlement had barely covered the legal expenses Calvin created while hiding marital assets.
He knew that.
Kyle knew it too.
On the video, Tabitha crouched beside Dad.
“This document only makes Calvin executor,” she said gently.
“He’ll keep the family from fighting.”
Dad gave her a long look.
“You are the fight.”
Penelope sat rigidly beside me at the garden table.
Neither of us spoke.
The footage continued for several minutes.
Calvin alternated between flattery and threats.
He reminded Dad of their Sundays at the club, then warned that Paige—that I—would waste the property by refusing to sell it.
Tabitha claimed the garden was too expensive to maintain.
Kyle said nothing until Calvin pushed the document toward him.
“Show him where to sign,” Calvin ordered.
Kyle placed two fingers beside a blank line.
Dad tried to rise.
He could not.
“Get out of my house.”
Calvin leaned close enough that his shadow covered Dad’s face.
“You won’t be here much longer, Everett.
Think carefully about who will control things when you’re gone.”
The cruelty of the sentence struck me harder than Tabitha’s threat in the garden.
Calvin had once called my father Dad.
He had accepted his help, his introductions, and his money.
Then, when illness made him vulnerable, Calvin had treated his death like an approaching business opportunity.
Dad reached for the call button beside his chair.
Tabitha took it first.
“Don’t upset yourself,” she said.
Kyle finally stepped forward.
“Give it back to him.”
Calvin turned.
“Whose side are you on?”
The room froze.
Kyle’s answer was barely audible.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
