Chapter 1

The air in the community hospital room was thick with the smell of antiseptic and unspoken words.

Sunlight, weak and gray, filtered through the blinds, striping the pale green walls.

My mother, Susan Carter, lay small against the white sheets, her breath a shallow rattle.

Mr. Davies, our town' s old lawyer and a friend of Mom' s for decades, sat by her bedside, a worn leather briefcase on his lap.

He held a pen over a fresh legal pad, his expression somber.

This was it, the dictation of her last will.

I stood near the window, twisting the strap of my purse, my husband Mark' s hand a warm pressure on my arm.

My brother, Jack, leaned against the doorframe, trying to look sad, but his eyes kept flicking to Mr. Davies' s pen.

Mr. Davies cleared his throat, his voice gentle but firm.

"Susan, are you ready to proceed with the details of your estate?"

Mom' s eyes fluttered open, finding Mr. Davies.

A small, dry cough. "Yes, David. Let' s get it done."

Her voice was a mere whisper, a shadow of the vibrant, sometimes harsh, woman I knew.

A knot formed in my stomach. I wasn' t expecting much, not really.

Not after a lifetime of being the responsible one, the quiet one, while Jack, the charming, reckless musician, got all the attention, all the bailouts.

"Regarding the house on Elm Street," Mr. Davies began, his pen scratching lightly, "and the savings account at People' s Trust..."

My breath caught. The house was small, still mortgaged, worth maybe $200,000 after the debt. The savings, I knew, were around $25,000, painstakingly saved from her years waitressing at the diner.

Mom' s eyes found Jack. A faint, almost imperceptible softening in her gaze.

"All to Jack," she rasped. "The house, the money. He' ll need it."

The words hit me, not with a bang, but with a dull, sickening thud.

It wasn' t a surprise, not truly, but hearing it spoken aloud, so definitively, stole the air from my lungs.

Jack straightened up, his feigned solemnity cracking for a split second, a flicker of something like triumph in his eyes before he quickly masked it.

"Oh, Mom," he said, his voice thick with false emotion. "You don' t have to..."

Mr. Davies continued, his tone unchanging, "And to your daughter, Emily Carter?"

My heart pounded, a tiny, foolish ember of hope still flickering. Maybe there was something, some small acknowledgment.

Mom turned her head slightly towards me. Her eyes were clouded, distant.

"To Emily," she said, her voice even fainter, "I leave my collection of old family recipe books, and the contents of the cedar chest in the attic."

That was it. Recipe books. An old chest.

Sentimental junk, probably. Worthless.

The final confirmation. I was nothing.

My ears started to ring. I felt Mark' s hand tighten on my arm, a silent anchor.

I couldn' t breathe. My throat was dry.

I remembered Mom scraping together money for Jack' s latest guitar, for his music lessons, for his rent when he couldn' t make it.

While I worked part-time jobs, applied for every scholarship, just to get through college, to become a teacher.

She never offered to help me. Not once.

"Mom, are you sure?" Jack' s voice, smooth as butter. "That doesn' t seem... fair to Emily."

He was playing his part, the concerned son. But his eyes were alight, already spending the money, I was sure.

He knew those books and that chest were just dusty relics.

Mom' s gaze, surprisingly sharp for a moment, fixed on him.

"It' s what I want, Jack. Don' t question it."

Her tone, though weak, held a sliver of the old steel.

He backed down immediately. "Of course, Mom. Whatever you say."

He shot a quick, pitying glance at me, a look that said, "Tough luck, sis."

It made my stomach churn.

I wanted to scream, to demand why.

"Mom?" My voice was a choked whisper. "The recipes? The chest?"

She looked at me, and for a fleeting second, I thought I saw something in her eyes, something unreadable, almost like pain.

But then it was gone.

"They were your great-aunt' s," she said, her voice trailing off. "You always liked... old things."

Her eyes closed, as if the effort was too much.

Old things. Yes, I liked history. But this felt like a final insult, a dismissal of my entire life, my needs, my worth.

Mr. Davies made a few more notes.

"I will have this typed up and brought back for your signature, Susan, with witnesses."

He looked at me, a hint of sympathy in his kind eyes, but also a professional distance. He couldn' t interfere.

He knew the history, the dynamics. He' d seen it all before, I supposed.

Jack moved closer to the bed, taking Mom' s frail hand.

"Don' t worry about anything, Mom. I' ll take care of everything."

His voice was full of false reassurance.

My heart felt like a stone in my chest.

I couldn' t stay. I couldn' t watch this.

The beeping of the heart monitor seemed to grow louder, each beep a nail in the coffin of my hope for maternal love.

I turned, Mark' s arm still around me, and walked out of the room, leaving my mother with her favored son.

The silence in the hallway was a relief, but the wound inside me was already raw and bleeding.