He looked me right in the eye and insisted I was wrong, that I must have been out of the room when our dying father gave him a special, final promise. My brother had just weaponized our father’s last moments to try and steal a vintage Mustang.
A white-hot rage burned away every last shred of my peacemaker persona. This was no longer about a piece of property.
He had desecrated a sacred memory, confident his disgusting lie was a perfect, irrefutable crime. What my brother couldn’t possibly know was that our father had left behind a digital ghost, and I was about to let it deliver the final, devastating word on video.
The Reading of the Will
The lawyer’s office smelled like old leather and finality. Dust motes danced in the slivers of afternoon light cutting through the blinds, each one a tiny ghost in the stale air. I sat between my brothers, a fifty-two-year-old slice of ham in a sibling sandwich nobody wanted. On my right, Mike, the younger, was tapping his foot, a restless engine of nervous energy. On my left, Paul, the oldest, sat with the posture of a king holding court, his hands steepled under his chin.
Mr. Henderson, our father’s lawyer for forty years, cleared his throat. His voice was a dry rustle of paper. “As you know, your father, David, was very clear in his intentions. His estate, including the house and all financial assets, is to be divided equally among the three of you.”
I felt a small, almost imperceptible release of tension in my shoulders. For all their bickering, Dad had always insisted on fairness. This was his last act of it.
“His personal property,” Mr. Henderson continued, adjusting his glasses, “is to be appraised, sold, and the proceeds also divided in thirds. This includes furniture, collectibles, and the 1967 Ford Mustang.”
A sound, low and proprietary, escaped Paul’s throat. “The Mustang? Dad promised me the Mustang.”
Mr. Henderson looked over his spectacles, his expression unreadable. “There is no codicil, Paul. No specific provision in the will regarding the vehicle. The instructions are as I’ve stated.”
“It wasn’t in the will,” Paul said, his voice smooth as polished wood. “It was a personal promise. Between him and me.” I saw Mike roll his eyes, a flicker of defiance he’d perfected since he was six. I, the lifelong peacemaker, just sat there, a knot tightening in my stomach. The looming issue had just rolled into the room, smelling of gasoline and old leather.
The Ghost in the Garage
We went to the house afterward. It was a strange, hollowed-out version of home, smelling of Pine-Sol and my dad’s faint, lingering scent of Old Spice. We were supposed to be making a list, an inventory for the appraiser. Instead, we were orbiting the garage.
Paul had the door open before Mike and I even got out of our cars. There it sat, under a dusty canvas cover. He pulled the cover back with a flourish, revealing the cherry-red paint, gleaming even in the dim light. Dad’s Mustang. It was less a car and more a member of the family, the fourth sibling who got all the attention.
“Look at her,” Paul breathed, running a hand along the fender. It wasn’t a touch of affection; it was a touch of ownership. “Dad and I spent hundreds of hours on this. He wanted it to stay in the family. He wanted me to have it.”
“He wanted us to stop at red lights, too, but you always rolled through them,” Mike muttered, kicking at a loose pebble on the concrete floor. “The will says sell it, Paul. It’s clear.”
“The will is for lawyers. This was about love,” Paul shot back, his eyes flashing. “Something you wouldn’t understand. You just saw it as a thing. I saw it as a part of him.” He was framing it already, casting himself as the dutiful, sentimental son and Mike as the greedy vulture. I hated it. As a paralegal, I lived by the black and white of legal documents. Paul lived in the gray, murky world of emotional manipulation.
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