Check the paperwork.
Keep your name on your own things.
And when they come to take what’s yours, remember that the person everyone underestimated is very often the one holding the deed.
Caleb told his mistress I’d be gone before I realized what happened.
I realized everything.
I always had.
I just let them keep believing I hadn’t, right up until the Sunday I corrected the record in front of the whole family.
They called me the barren wife with no place in the family.
It turned out the family had no place without me —
because I was the one who owned the table they’d been sneering at me across for ten years.
I kept the table.
I kept my name.
I kept everything that was always, quietly, mine.
May you like
And I finally set down the stone.
THE END
