While My Family Fought Over Grandmas Will, I Was the Only One Who Took Her Beloved Dog and Discovered the Secret She Left Behind

The graveyard was a theater of unspoken resentment, a place where the air felt heavy not with grief, but with calculation. As Grandma Cassandra was lowered into the earth, I stood apart from the rest of the family, my fingers entwined in the worn leather of Berta’s leash. Berta, a golden retriever whose muzzle had turned as white as the winter frost, whimpered low in her throat. She had been Grandma’s shadow for over a decade—the only creature, Grandma often joked, who didn’t have a price tag.

Grandma was a woman of formidable wealth and even more formidable principles. She had built a textile empire from nothing, and she expected the same grit from her descendants. She would pay for an Ivy League education, but she wouldn’t buy you a car. She would fund a startup, but she wouldn’t pay your rent. This philosophy had earned her a brood of children and grandchildren who viewed her not as a matriarch, but as a bank vault with a frustratingly complex combination.