Then Dad turned to me. “And you’ll get your grandfather’s cabin.”
Dad nodded toward my brother.
I blinked. “The hunting shack?”
Dad hesitated. “You’re still studying. You don’t need much.”
Chris let out a short laugh.
“That place is falling apart.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but Dad added gently, “And besides, your grandfather would’ve wanted it that way.”
That silenced everyone.
Chris let out a short laugh.
The thing is, I didn’t know how to feel about it yet.
Do you ever have one of those moments where you know you should speak up, but the words just won’t come?
That was me, sitting there like an idiot while my future got parceled out across a worn kitchen table.
Dad pushed his chair back. “That’s settled then.”
Was it? I wasn’t sure, but I nodded anyway.
“That’s settled then.”
The confrontation happened in the driveway.
I was already halfway to my car when Chris called out.
“So that’s it. You and Grandpa’s little hunting shack.”
I turned.
He leaned against his truck, arms crossed, shaking his head like he found the whole thing amusing.
The confrontation happened in the driveway.
“All those years,” he added. “All that time you spent out there with him.”
I didn’t answer. What was I supposed to say? That I’d loved those weekends? That they’d meant something?
He snorted.
“Guess being the favorite didn’t pay off after all.”
I felt my face heat. “That’s not fair.”
He snorted.
He gestured toward the house behind us. The one we grew up in, with the good memories and the bad ones, all knotted together like Christmas lights you can’t quite untangle.
“This is what fair looks like,” he said. “You can have the memories, and rot. I’ll take the walls.”
He got into his truck without waiting for a response and pulled out of the driveway, gravel spitting behind him.
I stood there longer than I should have.
He gestured toward the house behind us.
The image of the cabin flashed through my mind. The narrow bed, the stories he told me, and the way Grandpa used to smile at me like I mattered.
Grandpa’s cabin was never just a place to me.
My earliest memory isn’t the house we grew up in.
It’s that narrow little bed in the shack, Grandpa sitting beside me, boots kicked off, reading fairy tales by lantern light.
Grandpa’s cabin was never just a place to me.
“You’re not too old for this?” he’d teased.
“No,” I’d said, curling closer. “Read the dragon part again.”
He always did.
He listened when I talked. He waited. He never rushed me.
With him, I didn’t have to explain myself.
He listened when I talked.
I didn’t have to be smaller, quieter, or more convenient. I could just be Beth.
Chris was always the athletic one. He made Dad proud at Little League games and school assemblies.
He went after what he wanted like the world owed it to him, no second-guessing.
I was the one who spent weekends at a hunting shack reading books and asking too many questions.
I didn’t have to be smaller, quieter, or more convenient.
You can guess which one felt more valuable growing up.
But Grandpa never made me feel like I was less. He just let me exist exactly as I was.
I remember one Saturday when I was maybe ten. I’d asked him why he spent so much time at the cabin when he had a perfectly good house in town.
He’d looked at me, eyes crinkling at the corners.
Grandpa never made me feel like I was less.
“Because some places let you breathe, Beth. And some places just let you survive.”
I hadn’t understood it then. Not really.
But I remembered it.
When Grandpa had died, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, couldn’t sit in that house without feeling like something vital had been pulled out of me.
I hadn’t understood it then.
The funeral was small. Respectful.
Dad gave a speech about hard work and family values. Chris read a poem someone had printed off the internet.
I couldn’t get any words past the knot in my throat.
So I stayed quiet.
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