My father threw me out on my eighteenth birthday, stole the $3,000 I’d saved from working after school, and used it for my stepbrother. Nine days later, while I was digging through a restaurant dumpster for something to eat, a stranger in an expensive suit called my name and told me my supposedly dead grandfather had left me everything. But there was one condition nobody had warned me about.

Tyler returned the application money from the portion he had not spent and apologized in person.

He arrived with his mother, who cried before she reached the porch.

“I knew something was wrong,” Tyler said. “I should have asked.”

“You were afraid of losing your chance,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So was Dad.”

Tyler looked toward the orchard.

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No.”

He nodded.

“I’m going to pay back the rest.”

“You don’t have to do it all at once.”

“I know. But I want to.”

That was the first conversation we had ever had that did not involve comparison.

Over the following months, the house became less like a museum and more like a home.

Eleanor stayed on to manage the orchard, though she insisted I learn the business instead of simply signing papers. I discovered that the estate was not a fortune in the effortless sense. It required employees, maintenance, contracts, and decisions. My grandfather had left me security, but not a life free from responsibility.