My mother’s eyes filled, but these weren’t the delicate tears from the chapel. These were raw, bitter tears, the tears of someone watching a future vanish.
“We’ll contest this,” Diana said, voice shaking. “He wasn’t thinking clearly. He was ill. Confused.”
“He was lucid,” Glenn said, and his voice carried a weight that shut the air down. “I have medical documentation from multiple physicians confirming his competency.”
Then he hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully, and the room tightened around the pause.
“There is something else you need to know,” Glenn said, and his eyes cut briefly toward my parents before returning to me. “Your parents have already filed a legal challenge.”
My stomach dropped. “What?”
“I received the filing yesterday,” he said. “They’re claiming Richard was unfit when he executed this will. They’re alleging undue influence.”
The phrase felt cold and clinical, but the meaning was personal, vicious.
“You manipulated him,” Glenn translated quietly, meeting my eyes. “They’re claiming you used him.”
My ears rang. My hands went numb.
Manipulated?
I had driven Grandpa to appointments when his hands shook too much to hold the steering wheel. I had sat with him in the quiet hours when the house felt too big. I had read aloud when he couldn’t see clearly. I had stayed even when there was nothing to gain but time.
And now they were turning that care into a weapon against me.
“They’re suing me,” I whispered.
“They are,” Glenn said grimly. “And they’ve hired Vance Clydesdale.”
The name hit like a weight.
Even outside legal circles, people knew Clydesdale’s reputation. A man who didn’t just win, but dismantled. The kind of attorney who turned courtrooms into stages and people into targets.
Glenn watched my face. “They will try to destroy you,” he warned. “They’ll pull apart your life, your finances, your past. They will twist your intentions until they look like greed.”
My pulse thudded loud in my ears.
For most of my life, my strategy with my parents had been avoidance. I made myself smaller. I stepped aside. I swallowed words.
Every instinct in me begged to end it quickly, to offer them something just to make the pressure stop.
Glenn’s voice gentled. “Do you want to settle?” he asked. “We could offer them a portion. Half, even. They might take it and walk away.”
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