The group text dropped exactly three weeks after the funeral—Family meeting. Sunday. 3 p.m. Be on time. No greeting, no preface, just the old command voice dressed in courtesy. I parked beneath the blue shutters that guarded my childhood and walked past the porch swing that never earned a single creak, carrying a leather folder tucked against my ribs the way others bring condolence flowers. Inside, it wasn’t the lighting or the quiet that felt off—it was the staging: my mother in a navy sheath w