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.
A Fragile Truce
“Let’s just focus on the house for now,” I said, stepping between them. It was my default setting. Susan, the buffer. Susan, the Switzerland of sibling disputes. My husband, Mark, called me the family’s unpaid diplomat.
For a few hours, it worked. We moved through the house with cardboard boxes and rolls of packing tape, the rhythmic screech of the tape a temporary soundtrack to our fragile truce. We sorted through photo albums, kitchen gadgets, and the endless collection of National Geographic magazines Dad could never bring himself to throw away.
In his study, I found the tablet. Dad’s old iPad, the one we all chipped in for a few Christmases ago. He loved it, mostly for playing solitaire and watching YouTube videos of old car restorations. Its screen was dark, covered in a fine layer of dust. I picked it up, my thumbprint a smudge on the glass. A sudden, sharp pang of grief hit me so hard I had to sit down in his worn leather chair.
Paul poked his head in. “Find something good?” he asked, but his eyes were already scanning for value.
“Just Dad’s tablet,” I said, my voice thick.
He nodded, already losing interest. “Right. Well, Mike’s getting whiny about wanting to leave. Typical. Try to keep up.” He disappeared down the hall, his footsteps echoing with an unearned authority that set my teeth on edge.
The First Crack
We met at a diner for dinner, a neutral ground I’d hoped would keep things civil. The smell of frying bacon and stale coffee hung in the air. For twenty minutes, we talked about funeral arrangements, managing to sound like three functioning adults who shared the same parents.
Then Paul cleared his throat and set down his fork. “About the car,” he began, and the fragile peace shattered. “I’ve already spoken to an appraiser. A friend of mine. He says it’s worth about fifty thousand.”
“Sixty on a good day,” Mike countered, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “I looked it up on Hagerty. We should use a certified appraiser, not one of your poker buddies.”
“My ‘poker buddy’ is the most respected classic car guy in the state,” Paul snapped. “And it’s a moot point. The car is mine. I’ll write you both a check for your ‘share’ of a lowball estimate, say, ten grand each. Just to be fair.”
The condescension dripped from his voice. Just to be fair. As if he were doing us a favor by offering us a fraction of what our inheritance was worth. I saw Mike’s jaw tighten, his knuckles go white around his water glass.
“It’s not yours to make offers on, Paul,” I said, my voice quieter than I intended, but firm. “The will is the will. We follow what it says.”
Paul leaned back, a smirk playing on his lips. He looked from my face to Mike’s, a general sizing up his opposition. “The will doesn’t know what Dad said to me. His last words, Susan. You weren’t there for all of them. He made me promise.” The lie was small, a seed planted in casual conversation. I didn’t know then that he was just warming up.
The Cold Air of a Conference Room
The second meeting with Mr. Henderson felt different. The air in the conference room was colder, the leather on the chairs stiffer. This wasn’t about grief anymore; it was about battle lines. Paul had brought printouts, documents from his “appraiser friend,” full of technical jargon and a final number that was insultingly low.
“As you can see,” Paul said, sliding a sheet across the polished table towards Mr. Henderson, “this is a fair market valuation from an expert.”
Mr. Henderson picked it up, held it at a distance, and made a noncommittal sound. “The estate will require three independent appraisals, Paul. That is standard procedure.”
Mike scoffed. “See? A real process. Not just some number your buddy pulled out of thin air after a few beers.”
“He doesn’t drink beer, he drinks Scotch,” Paul corrected him, as if that lent credibility. “And he knows more about Mustangs than you know about anything.”
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