Maybe our lives aren’t always changed by the doors we choose to open.
Sometimes they’re changed by what someone leaves outside them.
My phone buzzed.
A photograph appeared in our family group chat.
Brooke had posted the graduation picture.
The four of us kneeling onstage.
Underneath it, she had written:
OUR DAD FINALLY REALIZED HE’S OUR DAD.
Lily replied:
Took him 22 years.
Sophie added:
He’s not very quick.
I typed:
All three of you are removed from the will.
Brooke immediately answered:
You don’t have any money.
I laughed so loudly I startled myself.
Then I looked toward the kitchen drawer.
There was something else I had been thinking about since graduation.
Something I had postponed for more than a decade.
I opened my contacts.
Rachel Bennett.
I still had her number.
Maybe it didn’t work anymore.
Maybe she was married.
Maybe she had built a completely different life.
