It was Juniper who found the letters.

Both younger siblings turned to her.

Nora, who had raised her siblings after their father left when she was sixteen, immediately fell into her old role: cook, cleaner, mediator. She made grocery lists and schedules. She scrubbed the kitchen floor at 6 a.m. She tried to impose order on a house that had never known any.

Michael resented it. “You’re not our mother, Nora. You never were. You just played pretend while the rest of us drowned.”

“I was a child, Michael. I was sixteen. What would you have had me do? Let Child Services take you?”

For Nora, the eldest, it was a summons back to duty. For Michael, the middle child, it was a chance to finally settle an old score. For Juniper, the youngest, it was a trap she’d spent a decade trying to escape.

Michael nodded. Juniper smiled—a real smile, small and tired and free.

“I don’t want the money,” Juniper said. “I want this house. Not to live in. To tear down. Every brick.”