My parents stood in the middle of Grandpa’s farm, told me they’d already sold the land to a developer, shoved “consent” papers at my chest, and sneered that I didn’t own a thing, but when I asked for the probate file number, my dad snapped, my mom smirked, and I drove straight to the county clerk instead

“Yes. Which means she accessed it and still proceeded with an affidavit claiming there was no will.”

My throat tightened, not from fear but from precision. The shape of it had become unmistakable now. They hadn’t misunderstood. They hadn’t assumed. They hadn’t gotten ahead of paperwork.

They had lied under oath after reading the truth.

I shifted the will packet into one hand and said, “I want certified copies of the affidavit of heirship, the transfer instrument, and the access log showing Gail Rowan viewed the deposited will packet yesterday.”

Glenn nodded once.

“We can certify the recorded instruments,” he said. “The access log we can provide as an internal record printout.”

“Do it.”

While Mara printed, I stepped to the side and called the one attorney I knew who didn’t waste words.

Tessa Marlo had handled a property line dispute for Miles’s uncle two years earlier and left grown men twice her size looking politely disassembled.

She answered on the second ring.

“Natalie.”