The Reading of the Will
The Other Wife

The Second Address

August 25, 2026 · Part 4 of 10 · 2 min

"That is a lie." Rosalind's voice cracked down the middle. "I did not know. I would never — thirty-six years, and you're telling me I let him—"

"Nobody's saying you knew," Lane cut in quickly. "Asa, that's not fair to say without proof."

"I'm just telling you what he told us," Asa said, and there were tears standing in his eyes now, furious ones. "I didn't ask for any of this either."

Garrett had gone very still, the particular stillness Whitney recognized from before he broke something — a wall, a relationship, a chair once, memorably, at Thanksgiving four years ago.

"This is insane," he said. "You expect us to believe some woman shows up eleven days after the funeral with a kid and a story, and we're just supposed to — what, split everything with her?"

"I'm not asking you to believe anything," Juniper said. "The paperwork isn't a story."

"Paperwork can be faked."

"Garrett." Lane's voice had an edge of warning now. "I drafted the divorce decree myself. I filed it. I officiated — unofficially — at the wedding. I've known about this for eleven years, and I have kept your father's confidence because that was my job, and I am telling you now because it is also my job."

That landed harder than anything Juniper had said. Whitney watched her mother's face go through something almost worse than shock — betrayal by someone who'd sent her a fruit basket every Christmas.

"You knew," Rosalind said. "You sat at my table."

Lane didn't deny it. That was its own answer.

Whitney needed air, needed a task, anything with edges. "Where's the will. The actual document. I want to see it."

Lane opened the folder at the head of the table, and beneath the will, clipped to the inside cover, was a second document — thinner, official, a property deed. Whitney's eyes caught the address before her brain caught up: a house, in Nevada, purchased four years after the divorce, deeded to Holt Kern and Juniper Thorne as joint tenants, worth — her stomach turned reading the number — more than the house Whitney had grown up in.

Continue the story Part 5: The Rewrite →

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