**THE MISSING WILL**
Grandma’s lawyer called this morning. I braced myself. Everyone knew she favored my brother, Mark. Still, the reading of the will was…weird. The old Victorian clock, usually ticking steadily in the hall, was silent. Even Mr. Abernathy seemed flustered.
“Everything is as expected,” he stammered, handing Mark a thick envelope. “Except…” He cleared his throat, avoiding my gaze and that of my sister, Sarah. “Except for a…codicil. Which…appears to be missing.”
Mark swore under his breath. Sarah gasped. My stomach churned. I saw Mark reach into his pocket and pull out… ⬇️
Mark reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled, faded piece of paper. It was the missing codicil. He unfolded it slowly, his face a mask of controlled fury. The lawyer, Mr. Abernathy, paled. My sister Sarah, usually so composed, whimpered, clutching her hands to her mouth.
The codicil, written in Grandma’s spidery handwriting, was a bombshell. It disinherited Mark entirely, leaving everything – the sprawling Victorian house, the substantial savings, the antique jewelry collection – to me. “To my dearest Elara,” it read, “for her unwavering kindness and understanding.” A single tear traced a path through the dust on the ancient paper.
Mark exploded. “This is a forgery! Grandma would never…” His voice cracked with rage, and he lunged for the codicil. I instinctively shielded the paper, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“It’s authentic,” Mr. Abernathy said, his voice trembling. “I… I saw her write it. Just last month. She asked me to keep it secure, but… I… I misplaced it.” He confessed to his negligence, his eyes brimming with shame. His explanation was unconvincing.
Sarah, however, was staring at Mark with a newfound intensity. “You knew about the codicil,” she accused, her voice low and dangerous. “You took it. You’ve been planning this all along.”
Mark’s rage shifted to a carefully constructed calm. A chilling, calculating calm. He denied everything, but his gaze flickered to the antique grandfather clock, now suddenly ticking again, its pendulum swinging with a sinister rhythm. The clock, Sarah pointed out, was the only object Grandma’s will specifically forbade from being moved. Except… it had been moved from its usual place near the fireplace, closer to the reading table during the reading of the will. And Mark, the only one who’d been close to it.
The police arrived, alerted by the lawyer’s increasingly frantic phone calls. Mark was taken away, his protests echoing through the hall. The house, once filled with the suffocating weight of secrets and accusations, felt strangely peaceful in his absence.
The relief was immense, but short-lived. Later that evening, as I sat alone in Grandma’s study, surrounded by the quiet grandeur of her possessions, I found a small, leather-bound diary tucked away in a drawer. It was Grandma’s. The last entry, dated the day before her death, read: “Elara, my dear, forgive the deception. Mark’s actions were not entirely selfish. He was protecting you from something far worse. The clock… follow the chimes.”
The chimes. I remembered the eerie silence, followed by the sudden, almost malicious, resumption of the clock’s ticking. A chilling premonition gripped me. The clock. The movement. The codicil. It was all connected. But to what? The diary ended there, leaving me with a gnawing uncertainty, the weight of a hidden threat heavier than any inheritance. The missing pieces of the puzzle, concealed within the rhythmic tick-tock of the old clock, remained to be found. The inheritance was mine, but the true cost remained to be seen.