Chapter 2 - The Letter in My Drawer
I did not answer Claire that night.
I did not call Ryan.
I did not tear up the attorney’s letter.
Instead, I washed the untouched pot of chicken and dumplings, dried my hands, and carried the letter to the dining room table.
Thomas and I had bought that table thirty-seven years earlier.
We had raised two children around it, argued over bills around it, planned vacations around it, and once sat there until three in the morning deciding whether we could afford to send Claire to a private college.
We had always found a way.
Now my daughter was trying to take the one thing Thomas had dreamed about having when we finally had enough money to breathe.
The next morning, I called an attorney named Judith Harper.
Judith had handled part of Thomas’s estate after he died, and she was the kind of woman who read every sentence twice before speaking once.
I brought her the letter.
She studied it for nearly five minutes.
“Did you authorize your daughter or son-in-law to contact this attorney on your behalf?”
“No.”
“Did you ever promise them the property?”
“No.”
“Did they contribute toward the purchase?”
“No.”
“The construction?”
“No.”
“The taxes?”
“No.”
She lowered the letter.
“Then this is not estate planning, Margaret.”
“What is it?”
“Pressure.”
That word landed harder than I expected.
Judith pulled up the county property records.
My name was the only name on the deed.
My name was on the tax records.
My name was on the insurance policy.
Thomas’s estate had been settled cleanly years earlier.
Legally, Claire and Ryan owned nothing.
But then Judith leaned closer to the screen.
“That’s interesting.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“What?”
“Someone changed the mailing address for certain county notices six months ago.”
“To where?”
She turned the monitor toward me.
The address belonged to Ryan’s accounting office in Atlanta.
For several seconds, I could only stare.
“I never approved that.”
“I assumed you didn’t.”
Judith printed the record.
Then she asked a question that changed the way I looked at everything.
“Margaret, does Ryan have access to any of your online accounts?”
“He helped me set up a few things after Thomas died.”
“Passwords?”
“Some old ones.”
“Change all of them today.”
I nodded.
Judith gathered the papers into a folder.
“And until we understand exactly what he has been doing, don’t tell Claire or Ryan that you came here.”
That surprised me.
“You think there’s more?”
Judith looked at the attorney’s letter again.
“People rarely hire lawyers to request something they believe they’re already entitled to.”
I drove home with the folder on the passenger seat.
At a red light, my phone buzzed.
It was Claire.
Summer plans!!!
Underneath was a photograph of the lake house.
My lake house.
She had added little digital fireworks over the roof.
Then came another message.
Ryan’s parents are staying in your room because it has the best lake view. Hope that’s okay!
I stared at those words until the light behind me turned green and someone honked.
For the first time since this began, I smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because Claire had just given me the answer I needed.
I typed three words.
Have a wonderful summer.
May you like
Then I drove home and changed every password I had.
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