Because it showed me how quickly some people move from mourning to looting.

Marjorie turned at the sound of the door.

She didn’t gasp.

She didn’t look ashamed.

She simply lifted her chin the way she always did when she believed she was the only adult in the room.

‘You’re back,’ she said.

I remained in the doorway, my heels dangling from one hand, my head light from not eating, my entire body too drained to feel real.

‘What are you doing in my home?’ I asked.

Marjorie ignored the question.

She tapped the dining table once with two fingers and said, very clearly, ‘This house is ours now.

Everything of Bradley’s, too.

You need to leave.’

I took in the room slowly.

Fiona rifling through drawers.

Declan zipping up one of Bradley’s travel bags.

A younger cousin carrying framed photos like they were leftover decorations from a wedding.

No one looked away.

No one paused.

It was as if I had been buried alongside him.

‘Who let you in?’ I asked.

Marjorie slipped a hand into her handbag and held up a brass key.

‘I’m his mother.

I have always had one.’

That key hit harder than anything else.

Bradley had asked for it back months earlier.

He told me he suspected she still had a copy, but he wanted peace, not another argument.

Now she stood there, using that old access like it was ownership.

Fiona yanked open Bradley’s desk drawer.

Papers shifted.

Something inside me tightened.

‘Don’t touch that,’ I said.

She turned, her expression laced with a kind of cruel satisfaction.

‘And who are you now?’ she asked.

‘A widow.

That’s all.’

There are words that wound.

And there are words that clarify.

That one clarified everything.

I laughed.