“She’s just here for the house,” Stephanie said once, not even bothering to lower her voice when I was standing in the next room.
Frank’s house — the one he’d built with his first wife decades earlier — sat on four acres and was worth more than I made in five years combined.
For eleven years, I heard some version of that sentence at every family gathering. I stopped correcting them after the third year. It never made a difference.
Frank passed away last month, quietly, in his sleep, after a long battle with his heart.
At the funeral, Brad and Stephanie stood together near the casket, barely acknowledging me except for a stiff nod.
