“Your father is trying to ruin us.”
“I’m simply telling the truth,” I said. “Something your wife has trouble recognizing.”
Trenton looked between us.
“Dad, can we talk? Just the two of us?”
Deborah whirled on him.
“What?”
“No, Deborah, please.”
There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard in years, almost like backbone.
“I need to talk to my father.”
She stared at him shocked, then stormed out.
We stood in silence.
Then he sat down and put his head in his hands.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“Specifically, the guardianship petition, the years of silence, all of it.”
“Did you know about Eleanor Vance?”
“No, I swear I didn’t.”
“But you knew what Deborah was planning for me.”
He finally looked up, eyes red.
“I knew it was wrong the whole time, but I went along because Deborah told me to. I’m a coward, Dad.”
I looked at my son. Really looked at him. The boy who used to run to greet me was still in there somewhere, buried under years of manipulation.
Knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway isn’t weakness, Trenton. It’s a choice. Every time you went along with her schemes, every time you stayed silent, those were choices.
Tears ran down his face.
“I know,”
but here’s the thing about choices.
You can always make different ones, starting now.
He looked up at me, hope flickering in his eyes.
“I’m not forgiving you,” I said. “Not yet. But the door isn’t closed. It’s up to you whether you walk through it.”
The next evening, I was sitting on my back porch, watching the sunset when my neighbor Vivien appeared at the fence line. She was wrapped in a cashmere shawl against the mountain chill, her silver hair gleaming in the fading light.
“Harold,” she called softly. “Do you have a moment?”
I waved her over. She settled into the chair beside me, her expression troubled.
“I saw something today,” she said. “Something I thought you should know about.”
“What is it?”
“Your daughter-in-law.” I was having coffee at the roast. You know, that little cafe downtown, and I saw her there with a man. They were at a corner table talking very intensely. She had papers spread out between them. A man, 40s, maybe, dark suit, expensive watch, very polished.
Vivien frowned.
“It didn’t look romantic, Harold. It looked like business, like she was hiring him for something or planning something.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“Did you hear anything they said?”
“Just bits and pieces. Something about documents and the court and making it stick. Harold, I don’t want to alarm you, but it looked like she was working on something behind everyone’s back, even her husband’s.”
I thanked Vivien and watched her walk back to her house. Then I picked up my phone and called Carla.
“I need you to find out who Deborah met with today,” I said. “A man at the Rose Cafe in downtown Aspen. 40s dark suit. She’s planning something new.”
It took Carla less than 48 hours to identify the mystery man.
“His name is Randall Morgan,” she told me over the phone. “Attorney based in Aurora, specializes in what he calls aggressive family representation. In plain English, that means he helps clients get their hands on assets through whatever means necessary.”
“What kind of means?”
“The kind that walks a very thin line between legal and illegal. He’s been investigated twice by the Colorado Bar Association. Both times the complaints were dropped due to lack of evidence, but his reputation in legal circles is, let’s say, colorful.”
I processed this information slowly.
“So Deborah hired a second lawyer without telling Trenton.”
“That’s what it looks like. And here’s the interesting part. I found some paperwork that Morgan filed with the Pitkin County Court yesterday. He’s claiming to represent the interests of the Winston family estate. He submitted a document that he claims is your will.”
My blood went cold.