Chapter 6: The Blue Folder
Robert arrived four minutes after I did.
I was standing in the front hallway when his car pulled up, not because I was afraid to go further but because I wanted a witness present before I touched anything.
My mother had taught me that much, at least — not in words, but in the careful way she'd always documented things, dated things, kept things in labeled folders in labeled drawers.
She had known, I think, that one day documentation would matter.
Robert came through the open door and stopped beside me.
He looked at the hallway, the coats still on their hooks, the small table with the ceramic bowl where she'd kept her keys.
"The bowl's been moved," he said quietly.
It had.
It was sitting six inches to the left of where it always sat.
I knew because there was a pale ring on the wood where it had lived for thirty years, and the bowl was no longer sitting inside it.
We went to the study.
The desk drawer was closed.
I opened it.
The hanging files inside were intact — insurance, utilities, medical — but the blue folder my mother had described was not behind them.
I stood there with my hand still in the drawer.
"It's gone," I said.
"Check the rest of the drawer."
I pulled it all the way out.
Behind the hanging files, pushed to the very back, was a single sheet of paper.
Not a folder.
Just one page, folded in thirds, the way you'd fold a letter to put in an envelope.
I unfolded it.
It was a photocopy.
Partial — only the signature page of a document, the top portion cut off or missing.
But the notary stamp was there, and the date — March 14th — and at the bottom, in my mother's unmistakable hand, her signature.
And below it, a second signature on the witness line.
I didn't recognize the name.
"Robert." I held it out to him.
He looked at it for a long moment.
Then he took out his phone and photographed it.
"The solicitor will know if this matches what she filed with him," he said.
"If it does, this is the page that proves a second will existed."
"One page."
"It's enough to open a challenge.
Especially combined with the letters." He folded the photocopy carefully and handed it back to me.
"Keep that on your person.
Don't leave it here."
I put it in my coat pocket.
We went through the rest of the study carefully, not searching — looking.
There's a difference.
Searching is what you do when you're desperate.
Looking is what you do when you trust that your mother was thorough.
She was thorough.
In the back of the filing cabinet, inside a manila envelope labeled *HOUSEHOLD MISCELLANEOUS* in faded marker, there were three more photocopies.
The full will, all four pages.
The notary's certificate.
And a handwritten note in my mother's writing, dated two days after the signing.
*Copy kept here in case the original is interfered with.
If you are reading this and I am gone, please take this to Robert or to a solicitor immediately.
Do not show Donna.*
I read it twice.
Then I sat down in my mother's chair, the one she'd sat in every evening for as long as I could remember, the armrests worn smooth where her hands had rested, and I held the envelope in my lap and didn't say anything for a moment.
Robert stood by the window.
He didn't fill the silence.
"She knew," I finally said.
"She knew Donna would do this."
"She suspected," he said.
"She hoped she was wrong."
"She wasn't."
"No."
I stood up.
"I need to call a solicitor today."
"I have his number in my phone.
He's expecting your call." Robert paused.
"There's one more thing you should know before you make that call."
I looked at him.
"The will Donna filed — the one that left everything to her — it was witnessed by two people." He slid his phone back into his pocket.
"One of them was a neighbor.
The other was a man named Gary Phelps.
He's been Donna's boyfriend for the past two years."
The study was very quiet.
"She had her own boyfriend witness the will."
"Yes."
I put the manila envelope inside my coat, against my chest, next to the single page I'd already pocketed.
"Where's Mia?" I asked.
"In the garden.
I asked her to wait outside when I arrived.
I told her we were sorting some paperwork."
I walked to the window.
Mia was sitting on the low stone wall at the edge of the garden, her tablet in her lap, her face tipped up toward the pale morning sun.
She looked peaceful.
She looked like a child who had already done the bravest thing she would do that day and was resting now.
My phone rang.
Donna.
I looked at the screen for two full rings.
Then I answered it.
"Sarah." Her voice was careful.
Controlled.
The voice she used when she was managing a situation.
"I think we should talk.
About last night.
About that man."
"Sure," I said.
"Let's talk."
"Not on the phone." A pause.
"Come to my place tonight.
Just us."
May you like
I looked at the manila envelope pressed against my ribs.
"I'll be there at seven," I said.
