Then she leaned closer.
“Arthur isn’t here to protect you anymore.”
That was the moment I stopped seeing Caroline as the woman my son had married.
I saw her for what she had become.
Someone who believed my husband’s death had left me defenseless.
I didn’t raise my voice.
I simply walked to the kitchen door and opened it.
“Get out of my house.”
She stared at me.
“Excuse me?”
“Leave your key on the table.”
For the first time in our relationship, Caroline looked genuinely surprised.
“You can’t just—”
“It’s my house, Caroline. And I am finished asking you to respect it.”
She dropped the key hard enough to chip the wooden table.
Then she swept past me.
At the doorway, she turned.
“You’re going to regret choosing this fight.”
I waited until her car disappeared down the driveway.
Then I sat down.
And my hands began shaking so violently I couldn’t hold my teacup.
Beatrice found me there twenty minutes later.
She didn’t ask what had happened.
She simply put her arms around me.
I cried against her shoulder.
Not because Caroline had threatened me.
Not even because of the money.
I cried because Nathan had allowed his wife to believe she could treat me that way.
And because somewhere along the way, I had become a stranger inside the family I had spent my life loving.
That evening, Thomas called.
