Not Where are you?
Not Are you all right?
Not I’m sorry.
“What did you do?”
I looked around the motel room.
“I opened an envelope.”
“Chloe says there’s some other will.”
“There is.”
“That’s impossible.”
I almost laughed, but nothing about it felt funny.
“Why?”
“Because Mom told us what she wanted.”
“No,” I said.
“You told me what she wanted.”
He went quiet.
Then his voice changed.
The anger softened into something more calculated.
“You know Mom wasn’t herself toward the end.”
I stared at the envelope on the table.
There it was.
Exactly what Margaret had predicted on the video.
“She recorded herself,” I said.
Another silence.
This one was longer.
“What recording?”
I ended the call.
Chloe called next.
I didn’t answer.
She left three messages.
In the first, she accused me of manipulating a dying woman.
In the second, she said I should “do the decent thing” and honor the family.
In the third, her voice became almost friendly.
She suggested we could “work something out.”
For ten years, nobody had wanted to work anything out when Margaret needed someone at 2 a.m.
Now everyone wanted a conversation.
Daniel sent one message.
I’m sorry.
I stared at those two words for a long time.
Then I turned the phone face down.
Bernard advised me not to return to the house alone while ownership was being sorted out.
Ryan and Chloe were already insisting that the newer will should not control.
Their position was simple: Margaret had been ill, I had cared for her, therefore I must have influenced her.
It sounded ugly because it was meant to.
The very work they had dismissed as “service” was suddenly the weapon they planned to use against me.
But Margaret had prepared for that too.
The video showed her speaking clearly about the decision.
Bernard’s records showed that she had contacted him herself.
He had discussed the will with her without me present.
The document had been properly executed.
And most importantly, I had not even known it existed.
I could not have pressured Margaret into giving me something I did not know she had given me.
Several days later, I returned to the house with Bernard.
Ryan opened the door.
He looked as though he had not slept.
Chloe stood behind him without sunglasses this time.
The lawyer from the funeral was there as well, but his posture had changed.
