My Best Friend Stole My Dead Mother’s Baby Name. So I Stole Her Husband’s Family Legacy And A $200,000 Trust Fund. Did I Go Too Far?

Planning for the Future

That same week, Dean came home from work grinning and announced he’d gotten the promotion he’d been hoping for. We celebrated by ordering expensive takeout and opening a bottle of wine after Maggie was asleep.

Then Dean pulled out his laptop and showed me something he’d been researching: a college savings plan separate from the trust fund Aurelia had set up. He said Maggie should have opportunities that came from us too, not just from the complicated legacy attached to her name. We spent an hour setting up the account and making our first deposit, and it felt good to be giving her something that had nothing to do with revenge or family drama—just her parents planning for her future.

A few days later, I sat down and wrote Aurelia a long letter thanking her for everything she’d done for Maggie. I told her how much it meant that she welcomed us so completely into the family history and shared all those stories about the Margaret Roses who came before. I explained that I wanted her to know how grateful we were, not just for the trust fund, but for making Maggie feel like she truly belonged to this legacy.

Her response came in the mail two weeks later, written in shaky handwriting that made my throat tight. She said that Margaret Rose names have always found their way to the right babies. That somehow the universe guides these things, even when people think they’re making choices for the wrong reasons. She wrote that she believed Maggie was meant to carry this name forward and that watching our family become part of their tradition brought her more joy than I could imagine. I cried reading it and put the letter in Maggie’s baby book so she’d have it someday.

Yoga and Laughter

The following Tuesday, Jenna texted asking if I wanted to try a mom and baby yoga class with her. I almost said no out of habit, but something made me agree. We met at the studio with both girls, and the class itself was fine. Nothing special, just a bunch of tired moms trying to stretch while babies crawled around the mats.

Afterward we grabbed smoothies at the place next door, and the woman working there messed up both our orders completely, giving us green drinks that tasted like lawn clippings mixed with sadness. Jenna made a face and said something about how the instructor kept calling it “sacred mama time” while her own baby was literally eating yoga mat foam, and I just lost it laughing.

She started laughing too, and we sat there cracking up about the whole ridiculous experience. And it felt easy and light in a way nothing had felt between us in over a year. Walking to our cars, Jenna said she’d miss this. Missed just being able to laugh with me about stupid stuff. And I realized I’d missed it too.

The First Birthday Party

Two weeks before Maggie’s first birthday, Diane called asking if she could throw a party for her. She wanted to invite the whole extended family and make it special since it was the first birthday for the newest Margaret Rose. I checked with Jenna first, not wanting to blindside her, and she said they’d come. That Celeste should be there too.

The party was at Diane’s house with decorations everywhere and more food than 20 people could eat. Ryan’s cousins came with their kids, and his sister brought her boyfriend, and Aurelia sat in the best chair watching everything with this huge smile on her face.

Jenna and Ryan showed up right on time with Celeste, who’d gotten so big since I’d last seen her. Watching our daughters play together on the floor, passing toys back and forth in that weird baby way where they don’t really interact but exist near each other, I thought about how they’d grow up knowing each other. They’d be at the same school events probably, maybe even in the same classes someday. I was glad we’d worked through enough of our mess that they could have that. Our drama wouldn’t define their relationship the way it had defined ours.

The next week, Fabian called asking us to come to his office to finalize the trust fund paperwork. Dean took time off work and we met with him on a Thursday morning. Fabian walked us through all the details, explaining that Maggie would have access to the funds for education expenses starting at 18, or for starting a business, or for buying her first home. The amount had grown since Aurelia first set it up, and hearing the actual number made my stomach flip.

This incredible gift had come from my worst impulses, from my desire to hurt Jenna, and now it would shape Maggie’s entire future. Fabian had us sign about 15 different documents, and the whole time I kept thinking about how I needed to make sure she used this wisely. That she understood the responsibility that came with it.

That evening after putting Maggie to bed, I brought Dean the journal I’d been keeping since before she was born. I told him I wanted him to read it. All of it. The parts about choosing her name for revenge and the parts about falling in love with the family history and everything in between.

He sat on the couch and read the whole thing in one sitting while I pretended to watch TV but really just watched him. When he finished, he looked at me and said it was important that I was being this honest. Not sugarcoating the revenge or pretending it was all noble from the start. He said Maggie would need to know the real story someday, complicated and messy as it was, because that’s how life actually works.