The Flash Drive
The county courthouse smelled like old paper and burnt coffee, the kind that’s been sitting on a warmer since sunrise. I’d been here once before for a traffic ticket in my twenties, and I remembered thinking the building felt too serious for something so small. Today, the building felt too small for something so ugly.
My attorney, Diane Mercer, sat beside me at the long table, a legal pad open, her pen still. She was the kind of woman who didn’t waste words, and I’d clung to that about her the past month. Across the aisle, my brother Austin sat with his lawyer, Franklin Shaw, a man with a perfect haircut and a price tag face.
Franklin’s suit looked like it had never been bent by real work. Austin’s posture said the same thing. Liam sat behind me, feet not touching the floor, his sneakers swinging gently.
He was eleven and too observant for his own good. He had a backpack on his lap and his hands folded on top of it like he was guarding something. When I’d asked him that morning why he insisted on bringing the bag into the courtroom, he’d shrugged and said, “Just in case.”
The judge entered, and everyone rose.
Judge Patricia Halden was a small woman with sharp eyes and silver hair pulled into a tight twist. She looked down at the file as if she could already see through it. “This is the matter of the Estate of Margaret Ellis,” she began.
Franklin stood before she finished. Not three minutes into the hearing, and he was already reaching for my throat. “Your Honor, we contend that the document submitted as Ms.
Ellis’s final will was not executed freely. The decedent was coerced by the respondent, Betty Ellis, who took advantage of her grandmother’s declining mental state. We believe there was manipulation, undue influence, and the possibility of forgery or tampering.”
The words hit my skin like heat.
Not because they were true, but because I’d been waiting for them. This wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was a script.
Franklin delivered it like he’d performed it in front of mirrors. I kept my face still, but inside, everything tightened. I thought of Grandma—Margaret, but she’d always been Grandma to us—standing at her kitchen counter, humming under her breath as she measured flour, then pausing with the spoon in midair because she couldn’t remember what came next.
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