time of my death, no gift, direct or indirect, is to be construed as marital property unless she, and only she, elects in writing to share it.”

Daniel actually laughed.

Grant swung toward him.

“You think this is funny?”

“No,” Daniel said.

“I think Grandpa-level petty from beyond the grave is inspirational.”

Even Father Martinez looked like he was fighting something at the corner of his mouth.

Becca leaned toward Grant and whispered something sharp.

He jerked his arm away.

That was when I noticed her composure truly slipping.

Her back was too stiff.

Her smile had vanished completely.

She had come to that funeral expecting legitimacy.

Maybe she had expected to hurt me.

Maybe she had expected Grant to prove something by seating her there.

Maybe she had believed the stolen dress and the front row turned fantasy into reality.

Instead, she had been made a witness.

Martin closed the folder partway and looked up.

“There is one final statement,” he said.

Grant swallowed.

I knew that look on Martin’s face.

It was the look of a man who had been entrusted with a blade and instructed exactly where to place it.

“To Grant Mercer,” he read, “if you are hearing this, then you lacked either the decency to love my daughter properly or the intelligence to deceive her well.

In either case, you are exactly the man I believed you to be.”

There are moments in life so precise they divide everything into before and after.

That was one.

A soft, involuntary sound escaped several people in the first few pews.

My cousin pressed a hand to her mouth.

Daniel turned away entirely, shoulders shaking.

Aunt Helen muttered, “Victor, you magnificent menace,” under her breath.

Grant looked like a man stripped in public.

He turned to me, but there was no defense left in his face now.

Only panic.

“Natalie, listen to me.

This is your father manipulating you.”

The absurdity of that almost made me smile.

“Manipulating me?” I said.

“You brought your mistress to his funeral in my stolen dress.”

“I didn’t think—”

“No,” I said.

“You didn’t.”

Becca rose suddenly, probably sensing the room had become dangerous in the social sense, not the physical one.

“I don’t need to be insulted by a dead man,” she snapped.

Aunt Helen turned toward her with such cold authority that Rebecca actually stopped mid-step.

“You needed only one thing today,” Aunt Helen said.

“Shame.

And even that, you had to borrow.”

Silence.

It was magnificent.

Rebecca’s face went bright red.

She looked at Grant, waiting for rescue.

He did not offer it.

That, more than anything, seemed to finally reach her.

She looked from him to me to the room full of people who now understood exactly what she was, and the confidence drained out of her so quickly it was almost pitiful.

Almost.

She left the pew first.

As she passed me, I caught the scent of my own perfume on my own dress, and the intimacy of that theft enraged me in a way the public humiliation had not.

She had not only worn what was mine.

She had entered it.

Altered it.

Claimed it.

I stepped into the aisle and blocked her path.

“Take it off,” I said quietly.

Her eyes widened.

“What?”

“The dress.