The Reading of the Will
The Name on the Deed

Standing Together

August 25, 2026 · Part 9 of 10 · 2 min

Friday felt too close and too far away at once. Naomi spent the days between running between Castellan's office and her own kitchen table, poring over the folder from the storage unit until the edges of the pages went soft from handling. Callum, to her surprise, had appointed himself Sable's ally almost immediately — texting her, sitting with her outside the lawyer's office, asking her question after question about a childhood that ran parallel to his own without either of them knowing it.

"She's not the enemy, Mom," he told Naomi one night, when she caught herself staring too long at Sable's number saved in her phone. "She lost as much as we did. Maybe more, for longer."

Naomi knew he was right, even before she was ready to admit it out loud. She thought about the letter that cut off mid-sentence — *if you're reading this, I ran out of time* — and wondered, for the first time without anger, what the rest of that sentence would have said. An apology, probably. Or an explanation Gregory never found the courage to finish, the same way he'd never found the courage to finish introducing his two children to each other while he was alive.

She decided, three nights before the hearing, that she wasn't going to fight the will. Not because the law would win — Castellan thought they had a decent chance, if it came to that — but because fighting it meant fighting Sable, and Sable had already spent her whole childhood losing that particular fight against people who should have protected her.

"I'm not contesting anything," Naomi told Sable, over coffee that had gone cold between them. "The house is yours. He wanted it to be yours. I understand that now."

For the first time since the will reading, something in Sable's face loosened — not quite relief, not yet, but the early shape of it.

"Thank you," Sable said quietly. "I didn't expect that. Honestly, I expected to hate you."

"I considered it," Naomi admitted, and Sable actually laughed, short and startled, like she hadn't expected to laugh this week at all.

Naomi's phone rang before either of them could say anything else. Castellan's name on the screen, at nine at night — never a good sign.

"Lorraine's attorney withdrew the contest an hour ago," he said, without preamble. "But you should sit down before I tell you why."

Continue the story Part 10: The House →

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