The judge didn’t just deny the motion. She did it with the kind of crisp irritation judges reserve for people who mistake their desperation for legal theory. She upheld the amended will, noted the clarity of the recorded statement, and added that further harassment of the estate would invite sanctions.
Aunt Helen squeezed my knee under the counsel table hard enough to bruise.
Afterward, in the hallway outside the courtroom, people moved around us in that strange legal way—quick, impersonal, clutching files, already onto the next disaster. Grant’s attorney murmured something to him and then walked away without a backward glance. I watched Grant realize, in stages, that he was now very close to being professionally alone.
He saw me and approached.
Blackwood shifted, but I touched his sleeve once. Let him.
Grant stopped three feet away. The fluorescent lights overhead flattened his face and showed every sleepless night he’d earned.
“Natalie.”
I waited.
“I never thought he’d record something.”
The absurdity of that sentence almost knocked the breath out of me.
“That’s your opening line?”
He looked around, lowered his voice. “I’m trying to say this got out of control.”