By the time you finish the letter, your hands are shaking.
The last page contains one final instruction.
If you keep the house, live in it fully. Open the upstairs. Fix what is tired. Let laughter offend the dust. If you sell it, sell it only when you no longer need proof that your life can change in a single envelope. There is also a locked box in the upstairs closet. The key is taped beneath the piano bench. It belongs to you now. Be patient with what it contains.
At the bottom she signs, not Evelyn, but Mrs. Mercer, which somehow breaks your heart more than anything else in the letter.
The fight begins almost immediately.
Gail and Thomas contest the will before the week is out. They claim undue influence, emotional manipulation, diminished capacity, and “predatory dependency” created by a much younger outsider who inserted himself into an elderly woman’s life for financial gain. The phrases are smooth, expensive, and disgusting.
