When Grandmas inheritance jolted my fathers memory, he finally recalled me when he heard about her legacy.
My life was never a smooth river, but the real blow didnt come from a childhood without parents. It arrived with the man I once called Papa after fifteen years of silence. He didnt show up with flowers or apologies; he arrived with a demand: Divide the inheritance.
My parents split when I was four. My mother soon fell into alcoholism, lost her rights in court, and my father, unable to be a real dad, handed me over to his mother in a tiny, remote village near Toulouse. He lived in the city and visited only sporadicallyonce every six months, sometimes less.
I went to the village school, learned how to work the soil, stitch on an old machine, fish, make lavender bouquets, and cook jams. Life with Grandma was simple yet genuine. In the second grade, my father arrived with an unfamiliar woman. I was sent out. When I returned, only Grandma sat in her armchair, eyes empty.
Wheres Papa? I asked.
He wont come back, Maëlle, she whispered.
And he never did. He built a new family, forgetting his daughter. Grandma and I lived alone. I didnt cryI had her. Wise, calm, strict and tender, she was everything to me: mother, father, friend.
When I finished third grade, Aunt Élodie, the village seamstress, told me, You have fairylike fingers. Enroll in the technical lycée; dont waste your talent on the fields.
I listened. I left for Lyon, studied, worked, survived. My father lived three bus stops from my university dorm, yet in four years he never asked after me, and I never asked after him.
After graduation I found a workshop, married Théo. We had a tiny flat, but every Friday we drove to the countryside to visit Grandma. She adored Théo and lit up when she learned I was pregnant. She never got to meet her greatgrandson
When Grandma died, the world went quiet. Then the notary appeared: the house, the land, the savingsall left to me. I wept over that document, not for the money but for the memories.
My father didnt attend the funeral. No call, no word. He learned of his mothers death six months later, and then of the will. For the first time in fifteen years he knocked on my door.
I didnt recognize the aged man at once. He got straight to the point: Grandmas inheritance must be split. Half belongs to me.
I laughed in his face, bitter and loud: Half for you? You abandoned her and me. And now you remember? The scent of euros?
He snarled, but Théo stood beside me: Leave, or Ill make you.
My father took the case to court. The law sided with me. He lost, paid the fees, and vanished again.
Théo and I opened our own sewing studio, producing work uniformsfor laborers, doctors, firefighters. Orders poured in. We lived, we built a life.
I never saw my father again, and I dont want to. Grandma was my true family. I held on because she once believed I deserved better. I live now to make her proud, somewhere up there beyond the clouds.
