I didn’t leave the building. I walked down the hallway to the probate window with the certified will packet pressed against my ribs like it was something alive.
The air smelled like old carpet and copier toner. People lined the wall clutching folders, envelopes, manila packets swollen with marriages ending, parents dying, assets being renamed. Government buildings reduce life to paper, but everyone standing in them knows the paper is just where grief and greed go to put on clean clothes.
When it was my turn, I slid the packet under the glass.
“I need to file this will for probate,” I said. “And I need to open an estate case today. Emergency if possible.”
The probate clerk was younger than Mara, sharp-eyed, tired-looking, with a ponytail so tight it made her cheekbones look severe. She flipped through the first pages, then stopped at the deposit stamp.
“This is a deposited will for safekeeping,” she said slowly.
“Yes.”
“And the access log shows my mother viewed it yesterday before the transfer was recorded.”
That sentence changed her posture.
Not sympathy.
Procedure.
“Name of decedent?”
“Walter Rowan.”
She typed. Frowned.
“No case exists.”
“Exactly.”
She looked up.