My name is Nora Bennett, and I was twenty-two years old when I buried both my parents on the same morning.

(800 words)

Three days earlier, someone had killed them outside my father's accounting office. The police called it a targeted attack, a robbery gone wrong in the rainy alleyway behind the building.

My stepmother, Celeste, apparently saw it as a long-awaited opportunity.

I had barely returned from the funeral service, the cold autumn rain soaking through my thin black dress, when she appeared on the front porch of our family home, holding my mother's porcelain urn.

"You have ten minutes to get out," Celeste said, her voice flat and completely devoid of warmth.

I stared at her, my hands shaking so violently I could barely hold my purse. "Celeste, please. I just buried my parents. This is my home."

She smiled coldly, a sharp, cruel tilt of her lips.

Then she turned the urn upside down.

My mother's ashes spilled across the rain-soaked asphalt of the driveway.

I screamed and dropped to my knees, scraping my hands against the wet gravel, desperately trying to gather what remained of her. The cold water mixed with the grey powder, running down the driveway in dark, muddy rivulets.

Behind Celeste, my stepbrother Blake raised his phone, zooming in on my face.

"Smile, orphan! You're finally independent!" Blake sneered, laughing as he recorded my breakdown. "Look at her! Pathetic!"

I tried scooping the ashes into my trembling hands, but the relentless rain carried them between my fingers, washing them into the storm drain.

"Please stop," I sobbed, looking up through blurred vision. "Celeste, why are you doing this?"

Celeste folded her arms over her expensive wool coat. "This house belongs to the surviving family."

"I AM HIS DAUGHTER!" I screamed, my voice cracking against the quiet hum of the suburban neighborhood.

"You were his obligation," she replied smoothly. "Not his future."

Her brother, Grant—a muscular, aggressive man who had spent the last five years living off my father's generosity—appeared behind her. He picked up my leather suitcase from the entryway and hurled it down the porch steps.

It burst open upon impact, scattering my clothes, my university books, and my childhood photographs across the wet pavement.

"Pack your trash and get off our property before I call the police for trespassing," Grant snapped, stepping down the stairs to kick a framed photo of my father across the gravel, shattering the glass.

I knelt in the freezing mud, clutching a handful of wet ash against my chest, my body shaking with dry, agonizing heaves. I looked up at the three of them standing under the dry awning of the porch.

Celeste was adjusting her diamond ring—the ring my father had bought her under false pretenses of love. Blake was still tapping on his phone, uploading the video to his social media feed. Grant stood with his arms crossed, a menacing smirk on his face.

"You took everything," I whispered, my voice barely audible over the patter of the rain.

"We took what was ours, Nora," Celeste said, pulling out her house key and turning the lock from the inside. "Your father left no valid will. As his legal wife, everything transfers to me. The house, the firm, the trust accounts. You have nothing. You are nothing."

The heavy oak front door slammed shut. The deadbolt clicked into place with a sharp, final sound.

I sat in the rain on my knees for a long time, the cold seeping through my stockings, numb to the bone. My parents were gone. My home was stolen. My dignity was scattered in the gravel.

Slowly, I reached out and pulled the shattered picture frame toward me. I wiped the wet dirt from my father's face in the photograph. Behind the paper, tucked into the backing of the frame, was a small, rusted iron key wrapped in a plastic pouch.

My father had hidden it there two years ago, telling me: "If anything ever happens to me, Nora, find the blue deposit box in the old bank on 4th Street. Don't tell Celeste."

I wiped my face, closed my fist around the iron key, and stood up from the mud.