“Drop this, Maren,” she pleaded, her eyes wide. “For once in your life, just let it go.”

“I can’t do that,” I said, pulling my wrist from her grasp.

“We are your family,” she said, her voice rising again. “Not those old papers. Not that empty dirt in the desert.”

“You chose Dorian,” I said. “You chose his greed over my father’s memory.”

She looked at me with a cold, hard detachment that cut deeper than her anger.

“Your father is dead, Maren,” she said. “And if you keep this up, you won’t have a mother either.”

I stood there, the silence stretching out between us like a physical barrier.

I realized then that there was no convincing her.

She was fully committed to the lie, bound to Dorian by her own choices and her own greed.

I began gathering the papers, sliding them back into the folders one by one.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice sharp with panic. “Leave those here.”

“No,” I said, shutting the lid of the metal box.

“Maren, I am ordering you to leave that box,” she said, taking a step toward me.