Claudine to Thatcher:
What about the morning routine?
Thatcher to Claudine:
Still going. She genuinely thinks it’s her baseline anxiety flaring up. She’s not going to figure it out.
I read those last two lines until the letters blurred into meaningless shapes. The morning routine.
I pushed my chair back, the legs scraping loudly against the hardwood, and sprinted to the kitchen. I threw open the pantry doors, my hands frantically pushing aside boxes of pasta and rice until I found it. A sleek, matte-black tin of loose-leaf herbal tea. The one I had been brewing religiously every morning for four months.
The tin Thatcher had gifted me back in October, pressing it into my hands on a crisp Sunday morning, his eyes brimming with the tender concern of a husband who just wanted his overworked wife to find a little peace.
My stomach heaved. I did not dare open the tin. Instead, I grabbed a heavy-duty Ziploc bag, sealed the entire container inside, grabbed a Sharpie, and slashed the date across the plastic. I shoved it deep into my oversized purse. Then, I marched back to his office, lifted my phone, and photographed every single page, every forged signature, every damning timestamp.
I thought I had uncovered the bottom of the rot, but as I closed the folder, I noticed a secondary sub-folder tucked behind it, marked Estate Dependencies .
I pulled it open, my hands shaking. Inside was a timeline—a step-by-step countdown to my absolute ruin. And the final step involved a notary, a dark road, and a terrifyingly vague phrase: “Finalize removal if resistance occurs.
