Chapter 4: The Will
I turned around.
Darcy's hand came to my arm — not pulling, just present.
A small, steady pressure that said: *wait*.
Julian had realized his mistake the moment the words left him.
His expression shifted fast, trying to recover, but the sentence was already in the room.
"What will?" I said.
He shook his head.
"Forget it."
"Julian." I stepped back toward the table.
"What will?"
Eleanor had gone very still in her chair.
Darcy set her folder back down on the table.
She pulled out her pen.
"Mr.
Julian," she said, in the same calm voice she used for everything, "you've just referenced a legal document in the presence of your wife's attorney.
I'd encourage you to clarify, rather than allow us to discover it on our own."
Julian looked at his mother.
Eleanor looked at the wall.
"It's nothing," he said.
"It was a conversation.
Nothing's been filed."
"What kind of conversation?" Darcy asked.
Silence.
I looked at Eleanor.
"Was it about my grandmother's estate?"
Her chin lifted slightly.
That was enough.
My grandmother, Ruth, had passed eighteen months ago.
She had left me a substantial inheritance — the same inheritance I had used, years earlier, to purchase the house outright.
But the estate had not been fully settled.
There were remaining assets still in probate.
A secondary property in Vermont.
A brokerage account.
A collection of items my grandmother had specifically listed by name.
I had not rushed the process.
I had trusted the attorney handling the estate.
I had not thought to check whether anyone else had been making inquiries.
"Who did he speak to?" I asked Eleanor directly.
"I don't know the details," she said.
"But you knew he was doing something."
A pause.
"I knew he was looking into options."
"Options." I sat down across from her.
"Eleanor.
I need you to tell me exactly what he said."
She looked at Julian once more.
He was staring at the table.
"He said your grandmother's estate still had assets in probate," Eleanor said slowly.
"He said that as your spouse, he might have a claim.
He said he had spoken to someone — a man, I don't know his name — who told him it was worth pursuing before any divorce proceedings were initiated."
The word *divorce* landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
Julian flinched.
"That's not — I wasn't planning—"
"You contacted a probate attorney," Darcy said.
It was not a question.
Her pen was moving.
"I was exploring options," Julian said.
"That's not illegal."
"No," Darcy agreed.
"But attempting to file a spousal claim against an inheritance that was explicitly designated as separate property, using information obtained before the other spouse was aware of any marital dispute, is something we will want to examine very carefully."
Julian's jaw tightened.
"You can't prove I filed anything."
"We don't need to prove you filed.
We need to establish that you were planning to." She looked up from her notepad.
"Your mother just told us you were."
Eleanor closed her eyes briefly.
"I want a lawyer," Julian said.
"That," Darcy said, "is the first sensible thing you've said this morning."
She closed her notepad and looked at me.
I nodded once.
We stood to leave.
Julian stayed in his chair.
Eleanor remained at the table, not looking at her son, her hands folded in her lap like a woman sitting in a waiting room for news she already knew was bad.
At the door, Julian's voice came one more time.
"Sloan." The anger was gone.
What was left sounded almost like the man I had married.
"I made mistakes.
I know that.
But we built something together.
Seven years.
That has to count for something."
I stood in the doorway.
"It counted," I said.
"That's why it took me this long to open the drawer."
I left him with that.
In the car, Darcy was already on her phone.
She held up one finger — *give me a moment* — and spoke quietly to someone on the other end.
When she hung up, she turned to me.
"My contact at the probate court can pull inquiry records.
If Julian made contact with anyone about your grandmother's estate, there will be a paper trail."
"How long?"
"Twenty-four hours.
Maybe less." She looked at me steadily.
"Sloan.
Is there anything else in that estate you haven't told me about?"
I thought about my grandmother.
About the last time I had visited her, six months before she passed.
About the conversation we had sitting at her kitchen table in Vermont, the one where she had pressed an envelope into my hands and said: *Don't open this until you need it.
You'll know when.*
The envelope was still in my desk at the office.
May you like
Unopened.
"There might be," I said.
