The barn wasn’t a gift. It was a joke—one last insult wrapped in weathered wood and rotting beams. While her brothers squabbled over real estate and bank accounts, Claire stood alone at the edge of the field, staring at the sagging roof she now owned. Her inheritance? Dust and silence.
They laughed when she told them she was cleaning it. Told her to dig through the junk and maybe she’d find something shiny. Bryan had the nerve to toast her with wine she hadn’t been offered. Sam just chuckled and said, “You got what you deserved.”
She hadn’t stayed for money. She gave up her job, her life, to care for the father they couldn’t be bothered to visit. And still, they saw her as less—less valuable, less deserving. But the barn held her father’s memory. And she wasn’t walking away.