My Sister Called to Say Our Father Was Dead While He Sat Beside Me. By Sunset, the Funeral She Planned Had Become Her Trial..105
“Because Marcus and I found Dad’s papers.”
Dad became utterly still.
“He left the house to us,” Simone continued. “The truck too. The accounts. Everything else.”
I looked directly at Dad.
He looked directly at me.
Neither of us trusted ourselves to speak.
Then Simone delivered the part she had clearly been waiting to say.
“You were specifically excluded.”
Marcus laughed again.
This time louder.
The satisfaction in it was unmistakable.
He said something to Simone that I couldn’t quite hear.
“What was that?” I asked.
There was some shuffling on their end.
Then Marcus’s voice came much closer to the phone.
“I said you’re finally out of the family.”
Dad’s fingers tightened around his coffee mug.
Marcus wasn’t finished.
“No more showing up every few months and pretending you’re the devoted daughter.”
The accusation landed harder than I wanted it to.
For years, Simone had loved telling people I was the daughter who “ran away.”
Apparently moving three states away for work counted as abandoning everyone, even though I called Dad several times a week, paid for plane tickets whenever he needed me, and had spent the last forty-eight hours dealing with something Simone knew absolutely nothing about.
