Stay in the family. I looked down at the affidavits in my hand. Perez. Armstrong. Hollowell. Three separate people trying to hold on to their homes with less legal standing than I had and more daily courage than my mother had ever thought to credit in me. Something almost like laughter moved through my chest, not because anything was funny, but because absurdity, when it arrives with enough certainty behind it, knocks something briefly loose before it settles into meaning.
“That house is in my name,” I said.
“You’re being technical.”
The sentence came out fast and smooth, proof she had rehearsed it enough to trust it. “My mother left it to you, yes. We all know that. But there’s law and there’s fairness, Meredith, and you’ve always hidden behind one when it suits you. Stephanie needs stability right now. She has a family to think about.”
Stephanie’s latest emergency. Of course.
Outside the office, my name was called. The judge had returned. The hearing was resuming. My clients were waiting for me to walk into a courtroom and fight for the roofs over their heads while my own mother told me blood should outrank paper, that sentiment was a form of legal argument, that the word family spoken with enough conviction rewrites what a will actually says.
