The Sundown Clause

Estranged siblings meet in a frozen park to divide a fortune, but their mutual hatred threatens to leave them with nothing.

The damn briefcase wouldn't open. The left latch clicked, but the right one was jammed shut. Cole grunted, his knuckles white as he twisted the cheap metal lock. He set the faux-leather case on the frozen slats of the park bench and tried again. Nothing. A perfect metaphor for us.

"Just break it," I said, my voice coming out in a puff of white. My own hands were shoved deep into the pockets of my thin coat. I hadn't dressed for this. I hadn't wanted to be here long enough for the cold to matter.

"It’s not broken, it’s just stuck." He jiggled it, a frantic, useless motion. He always did that—insisted on a finesse he didn’t possess. We were sitting on opposite ends of a bench overlooking the duck pond, which was just a sheet of pockmarked, grey ice. A few miserable geese huddled near the edge, looking as out of place as we did.

"It's five-fifteen, Cole. The sun sets at six-oh-three," I said, reading the time off my phone. The lawyer's email was still open on the screen. ‘The terms are absolute. A notarized agreement on the division of assets must be signed by both parties and time-stamped before sunset on March twelfth. Failure to comply results in the forfeiture of the entire estate to the Winnipeg Humane Society.’ Gran, a spiteful old cat lover to the very end.

He finally gave the lock a hard smack with the heel of his hand. It sprang open with a pathetic pop. Inside, nestled in cheap foam, was a single, thick cream-colored envelope. The original will. Beside it, a sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip—his proposal.

He pulled out his documents and slid them across the bench. They stopped halfway between us. I didn't move to pick them up. "This is everything," he said. "Clean and simple. I've already had it drafted by a guy I know. All we have to do is sign."

I leaned over and picked up the papers. The metal of the binder clip was so cold it felt like it was burning my fingertips. I flipped through the pages. Numbers, legalese, asset allocations. It took me less than a minute to see it. The summer house, the stocks, the liquid cash accounts. It was all technically divided, but the things with immediate, untraceable value all skewed his way. The property, with its tax burdens and upkeep, was mostly mine.

"You've got to be kidding me," I muttered, letting the pages drop onto the bench. "This isn't a division, Cole. This is you looting the place and leaving me with the bills."

"It's fair!" he snapped, his voice sharp. "Look at the total valuation. It's almost fifty-fifty. I took into account the sentiment. You loved that stupid house."

"I loved it when I was ten. I haven't been back in fifteen years because you and Dad made it impossible. You're giving me a tax liability and calling it a gift." The old anger, the familiar, hot acid of it, started churning in my stomach. It was always like this. He’d twist the facts until they fit his narrative, and then get angry when you wouldn't believe him.

"So what do you want, Lucy? You want me to just hand you a check? Life doesn't work that way."

"I want what's fair. A true fifty-fifty split. Sell everything. All of it. The house, the stocks, the car. We split the cash down the middle. No sentiment. No bullshit." My teeth were chattering now, but not just from the cold.

He laughed, a short, barking sound that had no humor in it. "We don't have time for that. Appraisals, realtors, broker fees... it would take months. We have forty minutes. This is the only way."

"This is the only way for you." I stood up, pacing in front of the bench, my boots crunching in the icy slush. "You know what? I don't believe this is even everything. How do I know you haven't hidden assets? Siphoned things off already?"

The question was meant to wound, to throw him off balance. But he didn't even flinch. He just looked down at his hands, a strange, quiet look on his face. And in that silence, I knew. Oh, I knew.

"Cole?" My voice was barely a whisper. "What did you do?"

He wouldn't look at me. He just stared at the frozen pond. "It wasn't stealing. It was an advance."

The words hung in the frigid air. An advance. My mind reeled, trying to process the casual, entitled betrayal of it. The money she’d kept in the bond accounts. The emergency fund she’d told me about once, years ago.

"How much?" I asked. The question was flat, dead.

"Enough," he said, finally looking up. His eyes were defensive, hard. "She was never going to spend it. It was just sitting there. I had debts. It was my inheritance anyway, I just took it a little early."

"You stole from our grandmother while she was dying."

"Don't be so dramatic." He stood up, towering over me. "It's done. This plan here," he tapped the papers on the bench, "this makes it right. It factors in what I took. You still come out ahead on paper."

I felt a roaring in my ears. The cold, the park, the ticking clock—it all melted away, replaced by a white-hot, singular rage. He didn’t even see it as wrong. He saw it as a logistical problem he’d already solved. The arrogance of it was breathtaking.

My eyes darted to the briefcase. The original will. The one document that proved what the estate was, what it was *supposed* to be before his grubby hands got to it. Before he could react, I lunged. I snatched the thick envelope from the case, my fingers closing around the brittle, important paper.

"Lucy, don't!" he yelled, his composure finally cracking.

"No!" I screamed, backing away from him. "No, you don't get to do this. You don't get to steal from her and then lie to my face about it. I'll take this to the executor. I'll take it to the police. You'll get nothing."

His face went pale. The mask of calm superiority shattered, revealing the desperate, cornered boy underneath. "Give it back, Lucy. You don't know what you're doing."

"I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm stopping you."

He came at me then. Not with a shove, but with a grasping, clumsy lunge. His hands weren't trying to hurt me, they were trying to get the envelope. I twisted away, holding it high. He grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my coat. We stumbled, a grotesque, silent dance on the icy path.

"Let go!" I hissed, trying to wrench my arm free.

"You let go! You're ruining everything!" he roared, his voice raw with panic.

He yanked. I held on. For a split second, we were frozen in a tableau of pure, stupid sibling animosity, a tug-of-war with a million-dollar rope. And then, the sound.

A sharp, final rip. Louder than a gunshot in the frozen silence of the park.

We both froze. Our hands fell away. We looked down. We each held a jagged half of what was once Gran's last will and testament. A few smaller fragments fluttered down, landing silently in the gray, wet slush at our feet.

I looked at the ruined paper in my hand. His signature was on my half. My name was on his. The main body of the text, the clauses and stipulations, were a mess of torn fibers between us.

My gaze drifted from the destroyed document to the horizon beyond the trees. A thin, brilliant line of orange was all that was left of the sun, bleeding out under a thick blanket of grey cloud. It was beautiful, in a terrible, final way.

Cole made a choking sound. I looked at him. He was just staring at the pieces of paper scattered in the slush, his face a mask of utter disbelief. The fight was gone. The anger was gone. All that was left was the hollowed-out shock of what we had just done.

The last sliver of sun vanished, and we were left with nothing but the dark and the cold.