or years. I’d watered it, trimmed it, talked to it during lonely nights.
It felt… fitting. Mia didn’t agree. She smirked as we left the office.
“She used you all those years,” she said cruelly. “Free care, free help. Hope it teaches you something.”
I said nothing.
I picked up the plant and went home. The next morning, my phone rang nonstop. It was Mia—crying, shaking, barely able to speak.
“You need to come over,” she sobbed. “Now.”
When I arrived, she was pale and frantic. She told me she’d remembered something our stepmom once said—that her most precious possessions were hidden somewhere safe.
Mia had searched the apartment all night and found nothing. Then she looked at the plant. Confused, I took it home and carefully lifted it from the pot.
At the bottom was a sealed plastic bag. Inside were gold coins—old, heavy, and unmistakably valuable. An inheritance from my stepmom’s great-grandmother, meant only for emergencies.
She’d never needed them. Never mentioned them. Those coins were worth far more than the cash and apartment Mia inherited.
My stepmom had been a quiet woman. Sometimes harsh. Rarely affectionate.
But she used to say something to me when Mia wasn’t around:
“I didn’t give you birth,” she’d whisper, “but I know you deserve love more than anyone else in this family.”
I think this was her way of saying it one last time—after she was gone.
