Chapter 2: The Shadow of Greta and Lydia
Then there was the “other” side of the family. Gran’s second daughter, Aunt Greta, and her child, Lydia. Lydia was a year older than me, but we occupied different universes. She viewed the world through a lens of transaction—if something didn’t benefit her social standing or her bank account, it was invisible. She moved with a calculated elegance, her nails always a weaponized shade of red, looking at our humble cottage as if it were a stain on her reputation.
They were “holiday relatives.” They appeared for the optics of Christmas or Easter, stayed just long enough to eat, and left without offering a single hand with the dishes or Gran’s increasing medical needs. When Gran’s health began to fail, the phone lines from their house went cold. I was the one holding her hand in the sterile quiet of hospice; I was the one who memorized the timing of her morphine drips.
When Gran passed last spring, I didn’t cry at the service. I had already mourned her in the long, dark hours of the hospital room. When the lawyer revealed that she had bequeathed the house and its modest contents entirely to me, I felt no triumph. Only a heavy, aching responsibility to protect the only place I had ever called home.
Chapter 3: The Deceptive Favor
It was a leaden Tuesday in November when Lydia’s name flashed on my phone. My heart did a nervous skip. We hadn’t spoken since the funeral, where she had spent the entire wake complaining about the quality of the catering.
“Elena, I need a favor,” she said, skipping any pretense of “hello.” “I’m certain Grandma was holding onto a packet of my legal documents. Birth certificates, old school transcripts—things I need for a new job application. I need to get in there.”
I hesitated. I had a rare overnight gallery installation in the city the next day. “Can it wait until Friday? I’m headed out of town tomorrow morning.”
“No, it’s urgent,” she snapped, her voice rising in that familiar, entitled pitch. “Look, just leave the key under the porch mat. I’ll be in and out in ten minutes. I’m not going to steal the crown jewels, Elena.”
Against my better judgment, I agreed. She was family, and the house was just a house, right? I tucked the key under the frayed coir mat and drove away the next morning, feeling a nagging sense of dread that I dismissed as overactive imagination.
