The room actually went quiet when the lawyer read it.
Not dramatic movie quiet either. More awkward than that. Papers shuffling. Somebody coughing near the coffee station. My aunt slowly lowering her phone.
“To my daughter, Rebecca.”
I honestly thought he’d said the wrong name.
Lily looked confused too. My mom just stared at the carpet.
The lawyer kept reading. Richard wrote that he knew he’d handled things badly after I was little. That every year it got harder to fix because he assumed I already hated him anyway. He said signing birthday cards with only his name started because he was embarrassed the word “Dad” might upset me.
Then came the part nobody in the room seemed prepared for.
Richard left me the lake cabin.
Not Lily.
Me.
Apparently Mom tried talking him out of it for years because the place originally belonged to my biological father’s family before the divorce. Richard spent twenty years quietly paying the back taxes himself so it wouldn’t get sold.
After the meeting, Lily followed me into the parking lot holding an old metal tackle box I’d never seen before.
“He wanted you to have this too,” she said.
Inside were every Father’s Day card I made him in elementary school.
All unopened. Still in the envelopes.