**THE MISSING WILL**
Mom’s lawyer called this morning. Turns out, the will she always talked about, the one splitting everything three ways between me and my siblings, doesn’t exist. He said she hadn’t updated it in twenty years, and everything goes to… Dad.
Dad, who remarried six months after her funeral. Dad, who conveniently “found” her old jewelry box just last week, overflowing with stuff I never saw Mom wear.
He’s coming over for dinner tonight. I’ve got questions. Big ones. ⬇️
The scent of simmering resentment hung heavier than the roast in the oven. My hands trembled as I set the table, each clink of cutlery echoing the discord in my soul. My siblings, Sarah and Mark, mirrored my unease. Sarah, ever the pragmatist, paced like a caged tiger. Mark, usually jovial, was unusually quiet, his eyes shadowed with suspicion.
Dad arrived, his new wife, Deborah, clinging to his arm like a gilded vine. Deborah, with her perfectly sculpted smile and eyes that held a chilling lack of warmth. She looked exactly like a woman who knew the value of a well-placed inheritance.
Dinner was a tense affair. Polite conversation dissolved into strained silences punctuated by the rhythmic scraping of cutlery. Finally, I broke the uneasy truce.
“Dad,” I began, my voice trembling slightly, “about Mom’s will… the lawyer said it’s missing. He said everything goes to you now.”
Dad’s smile faltered, a flicker of something akin to guilt crossing his face before a practiced mask of innocence settled back in place. “Well, darling,” he said, his voice smooth as polished granite, “your mother never actually *told* me about a will. Perhaps it was misplaced, lost in the shuffle after… everything.”
Sarah, never one to mince words, cut him off. “Lost? Or conveniently… disappeared?” She pointed a finger at Deborah. “And what about the jewelry box? Mom never owned anything remotely that extravagant.”
Deborah laughed, a brittle, high-pitched sound. “Oh, that? Those were simply some old trinkets your mother kept hidden away. She was quite sentimental, you know.”
My blood ran cold. This wasn’t just about money; this was about Mom’s memory, about the deliberate erasure of her wishes.
Mark, usually the peacemaker, slammed his fist on the table. “No, it’s not,” he roared. “This is about theft!”
The tension snapped. A furious argument erupted, accusations flying like shrapnel. I found myself strangely calm, a cold fury replacing the initial shock. I remembered something Mom had once said, a throwaway comment about a safety deposit box at First National Bank. A box she’d only mentioned once, then laughed it off as a joke.
The next morning, armed with a subpoena, we three siblings stormed First National Bank. The contents of the safety deposit box – a meticulously organized collection of Mom’s financial documents, including a meticulously updated will – were our evidence. The will, dated just three weeks before her death, clearly outlined a three-way split of her assets, specifically excluding Dad and Deborah.
The lawyer, dumbfounded, confirmed its authenticity.
Later, we sat around a table, not at a dinner setting but in the lawyer’s office, a newfound solidarity binding us. We had won. The evidence was irrefutable. Dad and Deborah were exposed as con artists.
But the victory felt hollow. The trust, once broken, couldn’t be easily mended. We knew the fight had changed our family. The missing will was found, but the real damage, the emotional wounds inflicted by betrayal and greed, remained. The drama wasn’t truly over. It was merely paused, the chilling possibility of future conflicts simmering beneath the surface. The resolution of the missing will only served to expose a deeper, more insidious fracture within our family. The richness lay not in a neat ending, but in the lingering uncertainty of what would come next.