Frozen just like that.
The next few days were a blur of calls and consultations.
Mr. Hamilton connected me with a probate attorney named Sheila Jameson. Tough, sharp, mid-50s with silver streaked hair and a voice that could cut glass.
She didn’t sugarcoat things.
“They’re throwing every tactic in the book at you,” she said during our first meeting. “And it’s not about winning. It’s about dragging you through mud. Hoping you give up or settle.”
“I’m not settling,” I said.
She gave a tight smile.
“Good, because it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
And it did.
They subpoenaed Grandpa’s medical records, looking for anything that could suggest cognitive decline. Every doctor’s note, every prescription, every scribbled posted on the fridge.
They wanted it all.
They claimed he was easily manipulated in his final months and that I’d inserted myself to cut them out. They accused me of exploiting a vulnerable elderly man for financial gain.
They were trying to rewrite history.
And the worst part, Ava went silent.
I texted her once.
“Are you helping them with this?”
She read it.
No reply.
For the first time since the wool reading, I felt truly alone.
The fall came slowly, like watching a leak in the roof turn into a flood.
My accounts were frozen under the injunction, which meant my freelance clients started pulling back. I missed deadlines, lost commissions, and ended up having to shut down my Etsy shop just to stop the flood of refund requests.
People thought I’d gone off the grid.
I almost did.
The house started to feel like a trap. Every creaking floorboard reminded me of grandpa. Every photo on the wall made my chest ache.
I couldn’t even walk past the garage without picturing him in his coveralls, leaning over the hood of some ancient Buick, grumbling about fuel lines.
And through it all, the rumors kept spreading.
Someone posted in the neighborhood Facebook group that I was hoarding an estate that was meant for the whole family. Someone else said I’d forced Grandpa to rewrite the will behind everyone’s back.
I started getting weird looks at the grocery store, at the gas station, even at the vet when I brought in the stray cat grandpa used to feed behind the shed.
Everyone had an opinion, and most of them weren’t good.
I hit bottom on a Tuesday.
I remember the day because it rained, rare in Arizona, and the leak in the ceiling finally gave out.
Water splashed onto my sketch pad, warping the pages.
I didn’t even try to save it.
I just sat there staring at the mess, feeling utterly hollow.
That night, I curled up on Grandpa’s old recliner, pulled a quilt over my shoulders, and broke down.
Not just tears, full body, chest heaving sobs.
For everything, for the betrayal, for the silence, for the years of being unwanted, for the man who gave me everything and wasn’t here to tell me what to do.
I cried until I fell asleep.
And the next morning, I got up and made coffee.
Not just for caffeine. For him, it was what he would have done.
That morning, I opened the garage.
It smelled like oil with dust and old leather. His tools were still on the pegboard.
His red shop towel was still hanging off the side of the workbench.
I walked inside like I was stepping into church.
And that’s when I saw it.
The old file cabinet near the back wall.
I remembered it vaguely. Grandpa used to say, “That’s where I keep my treasures.”
I always thought he meant old receipts and expired fishing licenses.
But something nudged me to look.
I opened the bottom drawer.
Inside was a thick accordion folder labeled ideas.
I sat cross-legged on the concrete floor and started flipping through it.
Blueprints, sketches, designs for modified car parts, innovations, weird hybrids, handwritten notes with titles like cooling pipe redesign for 327 V8 and Hutchkins custom manifold concept.