Blood Isn't Thicker

    Chapter Four

Aunt Helen's dining room smelled of roasted chicken and old grudges. Nothing had changed: the same ticking clock, the same heavy curtains, the same silence that always fell when she walked in unwanted.

Sharon stood in the doorway with the brown folder under her arm. At the long table sat Uncle Richard, Aunt Helen, her cousins Carla and Ben, and her grandmother at the head, small and silent in her wheelchair.

On the table, Helen had laid out Sharon's mother's good china, the cream plates with the thin gold rim that had always been kept in the cabinet for Christmas. Sharon's chest tightened. They had taken even that.

She counted faces and felt the old grief rise. You all locked the gate. She thought.

In her last life, on the day the zombies came, she had run barefoot through the streets to this house. She had pounded on this very door until her knuckles bled, begging. She had heard them inside. She had heard Carla whisper, "Don't open it, she'll bring them in."

Then she had heard the bolt slide shut. She had stayed on that doorstep until the screaming behind her drowned out everything else.

"Sharon, darling." Aunt Helen rose, arms spread, glittering with the jewelry bought from Sharon's parents' estate. "Come sit. We've been so worried."

Worried. The word was almost funny. They had never once worried while she was alive to hear it.

"I'll stand."

Uncle Richard cleared his throat. "Vivian tells us there's been some... misunderstanding with Michael."

"Vivian."

"She's like family, dear."

"No." Sharon's voice rang out clean in the room. "She isn't."

Silence filled the room. Her grandmother's eyes lifted.

Aunt Helen's smile tightened. "Let's be reasonable. Your parents wanted the trust to benefit the whole family. You're a young woman, you shouldn't be managing such money alone. Richard and I will take over as trustees."

"They named me sole beneficiary."

"They named you temporarily." Richard slapped the table, and the plates rattled. "Until you married and settled. Don't be selfish, girl."

Sharon laughed. It came out broken.

"Selfish." She set the folder on the table. "Do you remember my twenty-first birthday? I asked you for fifty thousand dollars to save Dad's company. You said family money was for emergencies. I sold my mother's necklace instead."

Helen's eyes flickered.

"Do you remember when I called, crying, after Michael hit me the first time? Uncle Richard, you told me a good wife doesn't provoke her husband."

Richard looked away.

"And Carla." Sharon turned. "Do you remember what you said to Michael at my engagement? 'She's lucky you picked her. No one else would.'"

Carla's face flushed scarlet. "That was a joke!"

"It was the truth you all believed."

Nobody argued. The clock ticked louder in the silence.

Ben, the youngest, stared at his plate. His shoulders were trembling. He had been seventeen when she last saw him, and he had cried quietly behind the door that night, too. She had heard that, too. He didn't dare look up. Sharon wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault, that he had only been a boy, but the words stuck in her throat.

"I came here to say goodbye," Sharon said. Her voice shook, but she kept going. "I know about the lake house. I know you sold Mom's land without telling me. I know you've been taking from the trust for six years through Helen's signing rights."

Helen went pale. "That's slander."

"It's a bank statement."

She slid the paper across the table. Helen stared at it as though it were a snake. Richard leaned over to read it, and Sharon watched the blood drain from his face, one line at a time, as he found his own name.

"You told me you handled the taxes," he hissed at his wife.

"Don't you dare act innocent," Helen snapped back. "You spent half of it on that boat!"

For a second, the whole table turned on itself. Sharon almost smiled. It was exactly what she remembered of them: loyal to each other only as long as nothing was at stake.

"As of tomorrow morning, my lawyer will revoke your trustee authority. You'll return everything you took, or be sued." Sharon's throat burned. "After that, don't call me. Don't come to my house. Don't send flowers when I die."

"Sharon!" Helen shrieked. "After everything we've done for you!"

"You did nothing but watch."

A small, dry voice cut through the room.

"Let her go."

Everyone turned. Her grandmother, who hadn't spoken in months, was looking straight at Sharon, her eyes wet. Her voice was thin as thread, but it filled the room.

"She's right," the old woman whispered. "I'm sorry, child. I should have protected you."

The words landed like a hand on a wound Sharon had stopped feeling years ago.

Sharon's composure shattered. She crossed the room, knelt beside the wheelchair, and kissed her grandmother's papery hand. It was cold and light, like paper, and it gripped hers with surprising strength. "I know, Grandma. I know."

"Run, Sharon," the old woman murmured, so softly that only she could hear. "Take what's yours and run."

Sharon stood, wiped her eyes, and walked to the door without looking back. Behind her, Helen was shouting, Richard was cursing, and Carla was crying.

Nobody said her name with love, not even once. Not one of them rose to stop her, and not one of them followed her out.

Outside, the night air hit her like a slap. She leaned against her car, shaking, and finally let herself breathe. Her hands wouldn't stop trembling. She pressed them flat against the cold metal of the door and looked back at the lit windows, at the family she had spent her whole life trying to earn. Somewhere behind the glass, a curtain twitched and fell still.

It's finished, she told herself. You said goodbye. You don't owe them anything else.

It didn't feel like winning. It felt like walking out of a house that had been on fire for years. Behind her, the fire was still burning, but she was finally standing outside it.

Her phone rang. Daniel, her lawyer.

"Sharon, thank God. Something's happened." His voice was strained. "Forty million dollars just left the trust account. Five minutes ago."

"What?"

Her stomach dropped.

"The transfer was authorized with a trustee signature."

Sharon's blood ran cold. Her fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles ached. "Helen's?"

"No." Daniel's voice dropped. "It was yours."