At my dad’s funeral, my brother said, “She’s just here for the money. Dad’s going to cut her off.”
I knew funerals brought out the worst in people, but I never expected my own brother to weaponize our father’s death. I had barely stepped into the aisle when Brandon’s voice cut through the murmurs, sharp enough to stop the room.
“She’s just here for the money.
Dad was going to cut her off.”
Heads turned.
Whispers rose.
Heat climbed my neck, but I stood still, refusing to shrink for him. Then the doors opened and the family lawyer walked in holding a small USB.
Conversations died.
Breath stalled, because whatever was on that drive wasn’t part of the ceremony. My name is Lily Hartman.
And before that day in the church, I used to believe grief softened people.
I thought loss pulled families closer, reminded them of what mattered.
But standing there beneath the stained glass windows, listening to Brandon rewrite my entire existence in one sentence, I realized I had been wrong for a long time. It wasn’t always like this between us.
When I was little, Dad woke me before sunrise on Saturdays, whispering, “Grab your boots, kiddo.”
We’d drive toward the water with the windows cracked just enough to let in the smell of salt. He taught me how to tie a line, how to wait without getting restless, how to listen to the quiet.
Those mornings felt like the safest place in the world.
Sometimes he’d lift me onto the dock and say, “You see the horizon?
That’s how far you get to dream.”
I believed him. But things changed when I chose art over the business path he planned.
I still remember the way his shoulders tensed when I told him I’d accepted a spot at an art school instead of studying finance.
He didn’t yell. Dad almost never yelled.
He just went quiet in that way that made the walls go cold.
Brandon filled the silence for him.
“She’ll grow out of it,” he’d tell relatives, smiling like he was doing me a favor.
“It’s just a phase.”
Except it wasn’t. As I got older, the distance between Dad and me didn’t feel accidental anymore. Calls went unanswered.
Messages disappeared into nothing.
I’d send him photos of my work, paintings inspired by the skyline he’d helped build in Boston.
And sometimes weeks passed without a reply.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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