The Reading of the Will
Split Four Ways

What Your Mother Knew

August 25, 2026 · Part 3 of 10 · 2 min

Barrett didn't sit. He stood with his back to the window, arms crossed, staring at Juno like she might dissolve if he looked hard enough.

"There's a letter," Abernathy said, "that your mother asked me to keep sealed. I was told to open it only in the event that a fourth child ever came forward and the paternity was confirmed."

"You knew," Barrett said. "You've known this whole time."

"I've known there was an envelope," Abernathy said. "I never knew what it said. Those were her instructions."

He slit the seal with a letter opener, unfolded two pages of handwriting Delphine recognized instantly — her mother's slanted, hurried script, the same hand that had signed report cards and birthday checks for fifty years.

"Read it," Corwin said. He'd gone pale under his stubble.

Abernathy adjusted his glasses.

"'If you are reading this,'" he read, "'then Juno has finally found the courage to come home.'"

Delphine's stomach dropped through the floor.

"'Home,'" Barrett repeated. "She said home."

"'I have known about Juno for eleven years,'" Abernathy continued. "'I am not asking my children to forgive me for keeping her from you. I am asking them to do what I was too much of a coward to do while I was alive — to see her.'"

Juno sat very still, staring at her own hands.

"Eleven years," Delphine said softly. "Mom knew for eleven years and never said anything."

"She's lying," Barrett said, jabbing a finger at the letter, at Juno, at all of it. "Or Mom was lying, or this whole thing is some con somebody's running on a dying old woman's estate—"

"She's not dying anymore, Barrett," Corwin said. "She's dead. Say the word."

Barrett rounded on him. "Don't."

"'One more thing,'" Abernathy said, cutting through them, his eyes moving down the page and stopping. His voice changed.

"What," Delphine said. "What does it say?"

Abernathy looked up, first at Juno, then at the three siblings who'd grown up believing they knew every secret their mother had ever kept.

"It says the affair didn't end when Juno was born," he said. "It says it went on for six more years."

Continue the story Part 4: Eleven Years →

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