“You’re not really his, you’ve no right to anything,” hissed Alice at their father’s funeral. The words cut through the air like a winter gust as she stood by the oak coffin. “Don’t expect a single penny.”
Eleanor flinched as if struck. The white lilies trembled in her hands while mourners shuffled past the casket, murmuring prayers and crossing themselves. Alice’s glare burned with undisguised contempt across the flower-laden bier.
“Not here, Alice,” Eleanor whispered. “He’s not even buried yet.”
“My father. My blood,” Alice spat. “And who are you? Some charity case he took in out of pity.”
Eleanor laid the lilies near the coffin’s head before stepping back, tears welling behind her black veil. There lay Samuel Whitmore in the white shirt she’d bought him just last week at Marks & Spencer, his work-roughened hands folded over his Sunday best. He might have been sleeping, were it not for the dreadful stillness. No more good morning kisses. No more patting her head like when she’d scraped her knees as a girl.
“Ladies, this isn’t the time,” clucked Aunt Mabel from next door, her patent leather shoes clicking across the chapel tiles. “Have some respect for the dead.”
Alice waved her off. “Simply putting people in their proper place.”
Eleanor stood apart, a stranger among Samuel’s neighbors from Canterbury, colleagues from the railway works, distant cousins from Cornwall. Even the floral tributes seemed to whisper she didn’t belong – not like Alice, not like blood.
“Ellie, darling.” Sarah from the charity shop squeezed her elbow. “Stay strong, love.”
Alice’s laughter carried across the churchyard gravel. “Proper little saint our Ellie, isn’t she? Thirty years of playing daughter and now she wants her reward.”
The vicar’s cassock billowed as he hurried past. “Ladies, please. The hearse is waiting.”
Later, in the empty terraced house smelling of furniture polish and old tobacco, Eleanor found the will tucked between Samuel’s ration books. Dated last winter during his pneumonia scare, the solicitor’s seal still crisp. The house in Canterbury, the seaside cottage in Margate – all to be shared equally between his two daughters.
Rain lashed the windows as Eleanor traced her father’s shaky signature. Outside, the neighbor’s tabby cat yowled – the one Samuel always saved scraps for. She’d have to remember to feed it now.
At dawn, Alice called. “You’ll contest the will, of course. A daughter’s rights-”
“He wanted us both provided for.”
“Bloody convenient you ‘found’ this now.” Alice’s car tires crunched on the drive. “We’ll see what the solicitor says about senile old men and manipulative orphans.”
The probate office smelled of mildew and ink. The clerk adjusted his spectacles. “Quite in order, Miss Whitmore. Witnessed by Dr. Pembroke from the Royal Free.”
Alice’s gloved hands clenched. “That quack? He couldn’t diagnose a head cold!”
Later, at the graveside, the wind whipped Eleanor’s veil as Alice tossed her handful of dirt with unnecessary force. The vicar’s words blurred – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Only the weight of Samuel’s old pocket watch in her muff (his last birthday gift to her) felt real.
“You’ll regret this,” Alice whispered when the mourners dispersed. “That cottage was Mother’s.”
Eleanor watched the gravediggers’ shovels rise and fall. Thirty years of being called “stepsister” when convenient, “charity case” when not. Samuel’s voice echoed in memory: “Pay her temper no mind, duckie. Hurt people hurt people.”
Now the hurt lay six feet under, leaving only lawyers’ letters and a tabby cat waiting to be fed. And Eleanor – no longer anyone’s daughter, but finally, unquestionably, her own woman.
