He died last month, and the will was clear: every cent, the house, the land—all to her. Not to me. Not to his only son. To Yara. My ex-wife.
I stared at the lawyer across the table, thinking maybe I’d misheard. But he just cleared his throat and slid the folder over like it was routine. “Your father named Yara as sole beneficiary,” he said. “Updated last year.”
That’s a full two years after the divorce.
My dad never liked confrontation, but this? This was a backhand to the face.
We weren’t estranged. We had Sunday breakfasts. I fixed his gutters last fall.
I called Yara right after the meeting, trying to stay calm. She picked up, chipper as ever, like nothing weird had happened. “I guess he trusted me to manage it better,” she said, like she was talking about a load of laundry.
The house she now owns outright is the one I grew up in. She’s already posted on Instagram about how she’s “refreshing the space with her touch.” New paint, new furniture. My mom’s piano? “Taking up too much room.”
I thought maybe there was some deeper reason—maybe Dad was hiding dementia, or got scammed, or blackmailed. But then I found the envelope. Tucked behind a drawer in his desk. My name on the front. Just one page inside. His handwriting. A confession I still haven’t shown anyone.
And one sentence near the end made me sit down and catch my breath.
“She was there for me when you weren’t.”
It hit me hard. I read it three times, hoping the words would change. But they didn’t.
The rest of the letter was short—he thanked me for being “strong in my own way,” said he hoped I’d understand, and that everything he did, he did “with peace in his heart.”
I crumpled the letter and then smoothed it out again. My heart was pounding.
I wasn’t there for him?
That year had been messy, sure. I’d been deep in a startup I was trying to launch. I missed a few birthdays, maybe skipped a few calls. But it wasn’t like I vanished.
And Yara? She and I weren’t even on speaking terms for most of that time. She moved two towns over. We split everything clean. No kids, no drama. Or so I thought.
I started asking around. Quietly.