My Husband's April Fool's Joke Came True novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Reading

The Nordquist family lawyer had an office on the fourteenth floor of the Lakeshore Building, with a long glass table and a view of the water.

At ten o'clock on Monday we sat around it.

Ernest took the head of the table.

Joan sat beside him, small and gray, with her hands wrapped around a paper cup.

Taryn sat across from me in a black suit this time, with her hair pulled back and her daughter left at home with a sitter.

She had a smile on, the patient smile of a woman about to be handed a house.

Terrence stood by the window with his arms folded.

He had not been asked to sit, and nobody had asked him to leave.

The lawyer opened a leather folder and cleared his throat.

"This is the last will and testament of Prescott Ernest Nordquist," he said.

"I'll read the operative section."

He put on a pair of glasses and began.

"I leave my shares in Nordquist Freight, my bank and investment accounts, my life insurance, and all my other property, to my wife, Kristen Whitfield Nordquist."

"I leave nothing to anyone else."

For a second nobody moved.

Then the lawyer turned a page, and I heard him stop.

"That's all," he said.

"That's the whole document."

The lilies on the sideboard had been there all week, and I could smell them from where I sat.

Taryn laughed.

It came out high and wrong.

"No," she said.

"Read it again."

"I've read it twice, Miss Beauregard."

"That isn't the will," said Taryn.

"I've seen the will."

"It's in his desk, it's six months old, it says everything goes to me and my daughter."

She turned on Ernest.

"You've seen it, too. You told me you had."

Ernest's face did not change, but his hand closed slowly on the table.

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