The Reading of the Will
The Restitution Clause

What Doreen Wanted

August 25, 2026 · Part 6 of 10 · 2 min

"I'm not going to pretend I don't understand how that sounds," Doreen said.

They sat in the Halvorsen family study, Isla's coat still on, refusing the tea Doreen had poured. She'd driven straight from Roland's facility, hands shaking on the wheel the entire way.

"You paid for the grant that got me into that conference," Isla said. "You put me in the same room as your son. On purpose."

Doreen didn't deny it. That, somehow, was worse than if she had.

"I found out who you were four years ago," she said. "A charity board mentioned Anselm Marchetti's granddaughter had graduated top of her design program. I recognized the name immediately — Franklin talked about your grandfather until the day he died, though never with regret, only with a kind of triumph I hated him for. I couldn't undo what my husband did. But I could make sure that if a Marchetti and a Halvorsen ever stood in a room together again, it happened on my terms, not by accident."

"So you engineered it."

"I created an opportunity. Whether anything came of it was never mine to decide. You and Weston did the rest yourselves — the falling in love, the years together, that was real, Isla. I promise you that was real."

"How am I supposed to believe anything is real after this?"

Doreen's composure cracked, just slightly, at the corner of her mouth. "Because I never meant for you to find out this way. I meant to tell you myself, quietly, once you were already family — once it was a story about how far I'd go to make things right, not a secret you had to dig up like evidence."

"Does Weston know?"

"No," Doreen said, too quickly, too firmly.

Isla's phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Weston, sent to a group chat with his mother's assistant still visible in the thread above it, a message clearly meant for someone else and sent to Isla by mistake.

*Mom, I know what you did three years ago. We agreed never to tell her. Don't you dare bring it up before the wedding.*

Isla looked up at Doreen, who hadn't seen the phone, who was still midway through a sentence about intentions and forgiveness.

"He knows," Isla said. "He's known the whole time."

Continue the story Part 7: The Fight →

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