Daniel’s attorney, Ruth Dawson, was already waiting inside.
So was a man I had never met in person.
He stood when I entered.
“Mrs. Mercer.”
“Margaret.”
He corrected himself immediately.
“Margaret.”
His name was Colin Reeves, senior fiduciary officer at First Plains Trust.
My son knew nothing about him.
That had been the point.
Ruth locked the conference room door.
Sam started to leave.
I caught his sleeve.
“Stay.”
He looked at me carefully.
“You sure?”
“No.”
That almost made him smile.
He sat.
Ruth placed a leather folder on the table.
“You have the original?”
I opened my purse.
The envelope slid onto the polished wood.
For a moment, nobody touched it.
Outside, someone laughed in the hallway. A copier started. Ordinary office sounds, absurdly normal.
Ruth opened the envelope.
Inside was a notarized directive signed by Daniel and me eight weeks earlier.
Then another document.
Then another.
My son believed his father had left him the house and business.Start an LLC
Technically, he had.
In the version of the will we let him know about.
But the operating shares of Mercer Tool & Fabrication had been transferred into an irrevocable family trust three months before Daniel died.
I held fifty-one percent voting control for life.
My son, Brandon, would inherit
forty percent only after my death—and only if he met the trust’s conduct requirements.
My daughter, Leah, would inherit nine.
