I smiled despite myself. “What happened?”
A beat.
“Grant filed the motion,” he said. “He’s formally contesting the amended will.”
I looked out at the water, hard bright blue under a clean sky. “On what basis?”
“Undue influence, lack of capacity, emotional duress. The usual desperation package.”
A wave slapped the hull. I tightened the line in my hand.
“He’s willing to drag my father through probate court after everything?”
“Yes.”
The anger came back then, not hot but dense. Like ballast dropping into place.
“There’s more,” Blackwood said. “His counsel is requesting disclosure of the hospice records and seeking depositions from the attending nurse and physician. He’s going to make a public argument that your father was confused, manipulated, and unfairly alienated from Grant by you and me.”
I laughed once, with no humor in it at all. “He’s really going with widow hysteria and elderly confusion. How very vintage.”
“I thought you’d appreciate the sexism,” Blackwood said.
I looked up at the mainsail snapping clean in the wind, then back toward the harbor, barely visible now as a low line on the horizon.
“Tell me we can crush him.”
A pause.
Then: “I think your father anticipated this. There’s one item from the safe we haven’t discussed yet. I was saving it for the hearing.”
I felt my stomach drop. “What item?”
“The video.”
The boat surged forward on a gust, spray hitting my face.
“What’s on it?” I asked.
Blackwood’s voice softened.
“Your father,” he said, “explaining exactly why he changed the will.”
I went still with the salt drying on my skin and the tiller warm under my palm.
Because if my father had left behind a direct statement, Grant’s challenge wasn’t just cruel.
It was about to become catastrophic.
Part 8
The video was worse and better than I expected.
Worse because it hurt to watch him alive again.
Better because my father had always known exactly how to speak when he wanted history arranged in his favor.
Blackwood played it for me in his office three days after Grant filed the motion. He closed the blinds first, which I appreciated. There are some griefs you do not want lit by downtown sunlight and the glow of a conference-room monitor.