She’d kicked me out at 15, forcing my dad to pick up the pieces.

Now, with his passing, she’s demanding a share of his inheritance. Tensions erupt as I fight to protect his legacy.

The day Dad died, a part of me went with him. I sat in his hospital room, holding his hand as the machines went quiet.

The nurses warned me it would happen soon, but nothing really prepared me for that moment.

The sick took him fast: three months from diagnosis to the end.

Just like that, the person who’d saved my life was gone.

The hospital room felt too small, too sterile. I remembered how Dad had always hated hospitals, but in those final weeks, he’d faced everything with the same quiet strength he’d shown his whole life.

Even near the end, he’d squeeze my hand and try to crack jokes about the terrible hospital food.

“Catherine,” he’d said the night before he passed, his voice barely above a whisper, “promise me you’ll keep living. Really living, not just getting by.”

I didn’t cry right away after he passed.

Instead, I found myself thinking about Mom, of all people. Funny how trauma works; one bad memory leads to another, like dominoes falling in your mind.

I hadn’t seen her since that night when I was 15 when she’d kicked me out of the house with nothing but a backpack and some half-baked speech about teaching me responsibility.