UNCLE HAROLD’S ESTATE

“Diana!”

My mother shot up out of her seat the moment she saw me, her hands clasped in front of her chest like she was about to drop to her knees, her voice cracking with rehearsed grief, tears already welling at the corners of her eyes, as if the last fifteen years had never happened.

“Sweetheart…

I’m so sorry about your uncle.

I’ve missed you so much, you know that?

All these years, I’ve never stopped thinking about you—”

I didn’t answer.

I just sat down in my seat, swallowing back the disgust rising in my throat, facing Uncle Harold’s lawyer, David Chen, who’d worked with the Meyers family for twenty years.

Beside my parents sat a man in a gray suit, who introduced himself as attorney Preston Wallace, legal counsel for the Carters.

“We’re here today,” he said, his voice dripping with a confidence that bordered on condescension, his eyes sweeping over me like he was appraising a defendant, “to ensure the legal interests of my clients — Ms. Meyers’s biological parents — are properly considered in the distribution of this estate.”

I turned to look at my parents, my throat tight with a fury I had to force myself to swallow, my fingers digging into the edge of the table.

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, but every word cut like glass.

My father spoke up, chest puffed out, his voice hard and bitter, as if he were the one who’d been wronged here.

“We’re your biological parents, Diana.

Don’t look at me like that.

We have a right to know what’s happening, and if necessary, to be part of how this family’s assets are divided.

You can’t just claim everything for yourself and treat us like strangers.”

Attorney Wallace continued, his voice dropping low, slow and deliberate, as if trying to make every word cut deeper.

“We’re also obligated to raise a serious concern.

Mr. Harold Meyers died at seventy-two, and in his final two years, he showed signs of cognitive decline.

Ms. Meyers lived in his home and controlled all of his personal and corporate finances.

We have reason to believe this will may be the product of undue influence.”

The whole room went silent.

I felt the blood rush to my face — not from fear, but from an anger I hadn’t let myself feel in fifteen years.