“They don’t need this burden yet,” Nicholas had said, staring at our bedroom ceiling, the morphine making his voice slightly slurred. “Let them live a little longer without this shadow.” I nodded because I loved him. But I knew better. I knew our children.
He slid a document across the table. It wasn’t our family lawyer’s letterhead, but something printed on Brandon’s business stationery. Nicholas’s signature seemed odd, too perfect, too firm for a man whose hands had been shaking with pain for months.
“You made him sign this document while under the influence of morphine.”
The anger that flared up in me at that moment was something primal, something I hadn’t felt since, when the children were little, I’d seen a fox trying to sneak into our chicken coop. I’d chased it away with a broom and with that fury that comes from protecting what’s yours.
“He was clear-headed,” Brandon insisted. “He wanted us to start over. There’s a developer interested in the land.”
“A developer for a luxury apartment complex,” Melissa explained, her eyes sparkling at the prospect of making money. “They’ll pay seven million. Mom, we can start all over again.”
