Sign the papers, sweetheart, or my brother makes sure you never work in this

I set the spoon down. I asked Camille, very politely, if she wanted lemon. She blinked, irritated by the interruption, and snapped that I had ten minutes to sign. So I walked to the drawer beside the fridge — the one Daniel used to call his ‘just in case’ drawer — and pulled out a slim blue folder. Inside was a letter, notarized, dated three months before his diagnosis was even confirmed. Daniel had known his sister. He’d known her since they were children splitting popsicles on the porch of that same lake house she was now trying to claim. The letter named me sole trustee of every Whitlock asset that had passed through his hands, including the shares Camille’s husband had been quietly borrowing against for two years. Attached were bank statements. Loan documents. A forensic accountant’s report Daniel had commissioned in secret. Camille’s smile cracked first at the corners, then collapsed entirely. Her lawyer flipped one page, then another, and slowly closed the folder like it had burned him. ‘Mrs. Whitlock,’ he said carefully, ‘we should go.’ But I wasn’t finished. I slid a second envelope across the marble. Inside was a cashier’s check — the exact amount Camille’s husband had siphoned from Daniel’s company before he died, plus interest. ‘Daniel wanted you to have a choice,’ I told her, my voice steady for the first time in nine weeks. ‘Take this check, sign the release, and we never speak again. Or I file everything I just showed your lawyer with the district attorney on Monday morning.’ Camille’s hand shook as she reached for the pen. She signed every page without reading a single word. As she walked out, her heels clicking unevenly across the floor Daniel and I had picked together, I finally let myself cry. Not because she was gone. Because somewhere, somehow, he was still protecting me.