The next day, I showed up in front of my parents with a lawyer and a transfer agreement on the table.
Twenty percent of the family company was mine—my grandfather had put it in his will before he passed. Held in trust by my parents until I turned eighteen, then mine outright.
In my last life, I'd been so consumed with competing against Linda Simmons for scraps of attention that I forgot the shares even existed.
I died without ever claiming them, and she got the benefit of every last cent.
My father stared at me, thrown off.：“You're barely an adult. What do you need shares for? Don't we give you enough spending money?”
My lawyer spoke up.：“Per the will of the late Mr. Carter, Evelyn Carter's shares are to be held by her personally upon reaching the age of eighteen. She now meets that condition. I'll need both signatures on the agreement.”
With a lawyer and a legal will sitting in front of them, they signed.
The second my mother set down the pen, she said：“These were going to be yours eventually anyway. Did you really have to do it like this just to make a point about us missing your birthday?”
“Just think of the shares as a belated birthday gift. You got what you wanted, so drop it.”
What a strange thing to say—my grandfather left those shares to me, and somehow they'd become a birthday present my parents were graciously making up for. People really are like that: hold on to someone else's things long enough and you forget they were never yours.
I slid the signed agreement into my bag. I tried to swallow it, tried again, but the bitterness still wouldn't go down.
“Mom, when have I ever made a fuss about my birthday? If anything, that sounds like your guilty conscience, not mine. But don't worry about it—I don't expect a birthday. It's just a birthday. It's really not that important. And the shares are what Grandpa left me. They're not a gift from you. They were always mine.”
“And Dad—spending money? You know exactly what the annual dividends on twenty percent look like. All those years since Grandpa died, that money's been sitting in your hands. If we really did the math, you'd probably still owe me.”
My voice was cold and hard, and I'm sure my expression matched.
The two of them looked at me, their faces shifting from shock to disappointment to outright anger.
“Why do you think your grandfather left you anything?”
“Because you're our daughter!”
I smiled faintly.“Well, can't help that. You're the ones who decided to have me.”
