“She drowned,” Milo, my nephew, stammered. His voice was thin, reeking of fear.
“Now we get the eleven million,” Grant replied. His tone was not fearful. It was greedy. Unafraid. Final.

Those were the first words I heard after my family tried to murder me. Not my name. Not regret. Not even the frantic guilt of an accident. Just the number. Eleven million.

People always think the elderly forget how to fight for breath, how to claw their way back toward the light. But they forgot where I came from. I grew up on the Atlantic shore, fighting currents stronger than their greed. Even now, when my legs fail me and a cane waits by my bed like a loyal dog every morning, my body remembers the water. It remembers that the only way to survive the depths is to stop fighting the weight and start using the current.

I pushed off the heavy fabric of my dress, angled myself sideways, and swam. It was slow, agonizing work. My joints screamed in protest, but I pulled myself steadily toward the darkest shadow of the pier. When my fingers grazed the barnacled post, slime coating the wood, I almost laughed.

After everything they’d done over the years—after every quiet humiliation, every patronizing sigh, every time they spoke over me at dinner as if I were a piece of upholstered furniture—this was the moment they chose to underestimate me. It was the last mistake they would ever make.