Now there were numbers.
Money had moved. Bills had been paid. Purchases made. My grandmother’s last act of love had been emptied into appliances and vacations and my father’s car note.
“Thank you,” I said, and my voice came out so flat I barely recognized it.
After we hung up, I went to the bathroom and threw up into the sink.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just sudden. My body rejecting what my mind already knew.
I cleaned the sink, rinsed my mouth, and went back to work because that is one of the strange things about being the reliable daughter: even when your whole history is rearranging itself, you still answer emails and meet deadlines.
The next week passed in that same split existence. By day I coded records and spoke in steady, professional tones. By night I sat on my porch with iced tea and thought about my grandmother’s hands. Large hands for a small woman. Hands that smelled faintly of Ivory soap and onions and Nivea cream. Hands that had folded my hair into sections when I was a little girl sleeping over at Dauphine Street. Hands that had signed a will because she knew exactly what she was doing.
On July tenth, Claudette mailed me formal notice of the evidentiary hearing: August 14, Orleans Parish Civil District Court. Attached was a list of documents to be presented. Original notarized will. Fraudulent will. Bank records. Property sale records. Affidavit from Claudette confirming execution of the original.
I read the date three times. Five weeks.
Five weeks until the truth stood in a courtroom where my mother could not smooth it away with church voice and wounded eyes.
The summons went out the following week.
