I knew the laughter was for me the second my heels touched the gravel driveway. It didn’t just float across the air—it sliced through it. Sharp, bright, and practiced, the kind of laugh people wore like perfume when they wanted everyone to know they were above someone.
The late–afternoon South Carolina heat sat heavy on my shoulders, thick with cut grass, hot pavement, and a faint salty breath from the coast miles away. Cars lined both sides of the long road leading up to Willow Crest Estate—black SUVs, shining sedans, a couple of vintage convertibles that looked like they only ever left their garages for charity galas and holiday parades. I walked forward, the crunch of gravel under my heels steady and deliberate.
Behind me, my cousin Marissa elbowed her sister and whispered, loud enough to carry. “Well, would you look at that? Didn’t know auctions started letting in people who live paycheck to paycheck.”
A few heads turned.
Someone gave that quick, mean little laugh that people use when they’re testing how cruel they can be in public. I felt my jaw tighten, but my face didn’t move. I’d learned a long time ago that the quickest way to lose was to let people see where they’d hit you.
So I just kept walking. Heels steady. Chin up.
Hands loose at my sides. Silence, I’d learned, cut deeper than any comeback. What they didn’t know—what nobody here knew—was that I hadn’t been broke in a very, very long time.
The estate in front of us stretched wider than three football fields. The white façade rose above the grounds with tall columns and long balconies, black shutters framing enormous windows that reflected the sky. Wide porches wrapped around the house in soft curves, as if the building were designed to sit and listen to generations of secrets.
It looked like something off a glossy Charleston real estate brochure or an aerial video tour: squint and you’d half–expect to see a drone shot zooming out with dramatic orchestral music. Willow Crest Estate. People around me said the name like it was a person.
On the lawn, guests in linen and silk clustered in small groups. A catering tent near the side served iced tea in glass dispensers and trays of tiny appetizers that disappeared almost as soon as they arrived. Laughter moved through the crowd in smooth waves.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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