At six in the morning, while I was still mourning my mother’s d:ea:th, my mother-in-law called to demand her inheritance: “That money now belongs to our family.” When I discovered what my husband had done behind my back, I stopped feeling sad and began preparing my escape.

The morning light was barely trickling through the blinds in my kitchen in Oakhaven, Indiana, when my phone"s" screen flashed with the name of my mother-in-law, Selina. I had barely taken a sip of my lukewarm coffee, and my husband, Jameson, was still sound asleep upstairs, oblivious to the world.

“I need that $1.2M in my son’s account by six in the morning,” Selina said, her voice sharp and devoid of any pleasantries. “Your mother is finally gone, and that money rightfully belongs to this family now.”

I sat frozen, the phone pressing against my ear as I tried to process if I was still dreaming. My mother, Selina’s counterpart in every way, had passed away six months ago, and the void she left was still raw.

“What are you even talking about, Selina?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Do not play the fool with me, Jennifer,” she snapped back. “Jameson told us the inheritance paperwork was finalized yesterday. Damien has to pay those investors today, or they are going to dismantle his entire life.”

Damien was Jameson’s older brother, a man who had burned through five different business ventures in under three years. Every failure left a trail of unpaid staff and angry business partners in his wake, yet he always seemed to have a ready-made excuse for why he was broke.

I hung up the phone without saying another word. My mother, Katherine Aniston, had spent thirty-eight years working as an emergency room nurse at a community clinic in a neighboring town. She wore the same wool coat for a decade because she considered anything else a frivolous expense. I remembered how she would come home with her feet swollen, soaking them in a bucket of warm water while listening to my troubles as if she hadn’t spent the last twelve hours saving lives.

She died on a Tuesday in March, right after finishing a grueling double shift. Jameson had been supportive for about ten days before returning to his golf games, his dinners with Damien, and his weekend getaways. He hadn’t been there when I cleared out her closet, nor did he answer when I found her old hospital ID badge and collapsed from the weight of grief. He certainly hadn’t been there for the countless meetings with the estate attorney.