Trevor kept shouting into the phone, but I let the silence do my talking. When he finally ran out of breath, I explained the thing he had never once asked in all his rush to profit. The house had never been solely mine to hand over. Fifteen years earlier, when his grandmother passed, she had placed the property into a family trust, and the trust named a beneficiary Trevor had conveniently forgotten existed. His younger sister, Marlene, the daughter he barely spoke to since a falling-out years ago.

“The keys open the door, Trevor,” I said gently. “They don’t open ownership.” The realtors had discovered it the moment they pulled the title. The house could not be sold without the written consent of every trust beneficiary, and Marlene, still stinging from the way her brother had treated her, had already made her answer clear. Trevor’s carefully planned investment had collapsed before a single photograph went up. But what he screamed next made my hand tighten around the phone.