Chapter 3: The Last Day
On Margaret’s final morning, the doctor told Lily to call the family.
Lily called Bianca first.
Music played loudly in the background.
“What is it now?” Bianca asked.
“The doctor says Mom is getting worse. Please come.”
There was a pause.
“Did she say anything about the will?”
Lily’s heart went cold.
“Bianca, she may not have much time.”
“I asked you a question.”
Lily looked at Margaret, lying pale and fragile beneath the hospital blanket.
“Just come see her.”
Bianca hung up.
An hour later, Bianca and Serena arrived. They brought no flowers, no food, no warm blanket. They entered the room as if they were walking into a bank vault.
Bianca opened the drawer beside the bed.
Lily stood up. “What are you doing?”
“Looking for papers.”
“These are Mom’s things.”
Bianca turned sharply. “Our mother. Not yours.”
The words hurt, but Lily had heard them too many times.
Serena searched through a cabinet, dropping scarves and medicine boxes onto the floor.
“Stop,” Lily said. “She’s right here.”
Their noise woke Margaret.
Her eyes opened slowly.
“Bianca…” she whispered.
Bianca rushed to the bed and held her mother’s hand, but not with love.
“Mom, where is the will?”
Margaret stared at her.
Then at Serena.
“You came for that?”
Serena forced a smile. “We just want everything handled properly.”
Margaret’s eyes filled with sadness.
“Properly for whom?”
Bianca lost patience. “You cannot leave everything to Lily. She isn’t your real daughter.”
Lily stepped back as if she had been struck.
Margaret suddenly reached for her.
“Lily.”
Lily ran to her side.
“I’m here, Mom.”
Margaret pointed weakly beneath her pillow.
Lily reached under it and felt something cold.
A key.
Margaret placed it in Lily’s hand.
“The west room,” she whispered. “Only you.”
Bianca lunged forward, but Nathan Reed appeared at the doorway.
“Step back,” he ordered.
Margaret looked only at Lily.
“You were never the girl I took in,” she whispered. “You were the daughter I found.”
Those were her final clear words.
Minutes later, the machine beside her bed went still.
May you like
And then the phone lit up.
Do not let them open that room.
