Chapter 5 - To GrandmaDelphine wiped her face. "What are you going to do to them?"
That question mattered more than any of the numbers. I looked out at the water, then folded the loan agreement.
"Nothing today."
"Why not?"
"Because money made our parents believe they could control everyone." I looked at her. "I won't use it the same way."
"So you'll forgive the debt?"
"I didn't say that."
For the first time all morning, Delphine smiled — a real one. I smiled back.
"First," I said, "we get you a lawyer."
"Then?"
"We find out exactly what happened to Grandma's trust."
"And Preston?"
"That's your call."
"And Mom and Dad?"
I looked toward the doors they'd disappeared through. "They're finally going to have something neither of us ever got from them."
"What?"
"The truth."
Naomi handed me a fresh coffee. Delphine lifted hers. "To retail?"
I thought about a break room in Store #17 twelve years earlier, vending machine crackers, three hundred jackets sent to the wrong state, and one stubborn woman who'd built an entire business out of nothing and believed in me before anyone else bothered to.
I raised my cup.
"To Grandma."
Delphine's eyes filled again. "To Grandma."
Our cups touched. For the first time in years, we weren't the successful sister and the disappointing one. We weren't the favorite and the failure. We were just Margaret Marlowe's granddaughters — two women finally realizing the competition between us had been encouraged, deliberately, by the two people who'd benefited most from keeping us divided.
The ocean rolled against the shore. The lilies moved in the breeze. Somewhere, I liked to think, Grandma was laughing.
Because the greatest thing she'd left us wasn't ClosetCo. Wasn't the trust. Wasn't hundreds of millions of dollars. It wasn't even the company I'd spent twelve years rebuilding from nothing.
It was the truth that finally arrived the moment we both stopped measuring each other's worth in dollars.
Delphine looked around the resort. "So what happens with Mom and Dad's loan?"
I took another sip of coffee. "Well…"
She waited.
"They get thirty days before the first payment is due."
Her eyes went wide. Then we both burst out laughing.
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Because forgiveness was still possible. Reconciliation was still possible. Even family, somehow, was still possible.
But business was business.
