After their father’s death, Kelly’s brothers forced her out of the family café, but they had no idea their father had quietly left her the key to something far more powerful. Kelly never imagined her life would fall apart so quickly. At 18, she already understood that kindness wasn’t always returned, not even by your own family.
She had always felt a little out of place in her home. Not unloved, exactly, but always outnumbered. Her dad was the kind of man people respected without question.
He had warm eyes, calloused hands from decades of work, and a laugh that filled the café before the smell of coffee ever reached the tables. Her brothers, Mark, who was 28, and Dylan, 26, were different. They never carried the weight of the café the way their father did.
In fact, they never made an effort. To them, the café was just a stepping stone to something bigger or at least something more profitable. Kelly, on the other hand, loved that place like it was alive.
Her mom had died when she was six, and ever since then, the café had been her second home. She’d spent her after-school hours wiping tables, learning to blend batter, watching her dad shape dough with that quiet rhythm he had. Customers used to call her “Little Sunshine” because she’d greet everyone by name, sometimes with a flower tucked behind her ear.
Meanwhile, Mark and Dylan were seldom there. She remembered one Sunday morning when her dad had gently nudged Dylan awake with a broom handle after he skipped his café shift again. “You said you’d cover the early hours,” her dad reminded him.
“I was out,” Dylan groaned, dragging a pillow over his head. “Ask Kelly. She’s practically your shadow, anyway.”
Her dad didn’t reply.
He just shook his head and went back downstairs, but Kelly caught the flicker of disappointment in his eyes. As Kelly grew older, she noticed the flicker in her father’s eyes more often. Mark was smoother than Dylan.
He always dressed well and liked to pitch big ideas, but none of them ever turned into anything real. When it came to actual work, he disappeared as quickly as steam rising off a coffee cup. So when her dad passed, the grief hit Kelly like a truck.
She was still in her senior year, juggling exams and coffee orders, and suddenly, she had to plan a funeral. What she didn’t expect, and couldn’t have predicted, was what came next. The lawyer’s office was colder than she remembered it being when they’d signed the café’s insurance papers years ago.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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