They could not.
Judge Kimble’s decision was thorough and well supported, and any appeal would have been equally frivolous.
Victor Strang quietly withdrew as their attorney, and the legal chapter of this saga closed.
But the emotional chapter did not close so neatly.
In the months that followed, I struggled with feelings that surprised me.
I had expected to feel triumphant. I had expected to feel free.
Instead, I felt hollow.
The trial had forced me to relive the worst moments of my life in a public setting. I had sat in a courtroom and listened to my own parents lie about what they had done to me. I had heard my mother say she regretted it every day, and I had known in my bones that she did not mean it. I had watched my father, this old man with a cane, deny that he had turned off the porch light on his pregnant 16-year-old daughter.
And I had realized something painful and important.
They were never going to be the parents I needed them to be.
They were never going to apologize sincerely.
They were never going to look at me and see what Grandma Lorraine had seen.
That was a grief I had to sit with.
A grief I had to allow myself to feel.
I started seeing a therapist. Her name was Dr. Irene Caulfield, and she was a clinical psychologist who specialized in family trauma and parental estrangement.
I sat in her office once a week for over a year, and I talked about things I had never said out loud before. I talked about the feeling of standing on the sidewalk at 16, watching the porch light go off. I talked about the look of disgust on my father’s face. I talked about the hole my parents had left in my life and the way Grandma Lorraine had tried to fill it.
I talked about the guilt I sometimes felt for succeeding, the strange, irrational guilt of a child who was told she was worthless and then proved otherwise, as if doing well was somehow a betrayal of the narrative her parents had assigned to her.
Dr. Caulfield helped me understand that I did not owe my parents anything. Not forgiveness. Not an explanation. Not a share of the money Grandma Lorraine had specifically designated for me.
She helped me understand that the anger I felt was not a flaw.
It was a rational response to an irrational situation.
And she helped me understand that moving forward did not mean forgetting.
It meant choosing every day to live a life that honored the people who had believed in me and refusing to be diminished by the people who had not.
Zara was 18 by then, finishing her senior year of high school. She had been accepted to three universities and had chosen the University of Virginia, where she would study psychology.
The college fund I had established with Grandma Lorraine’s trust money would cover her tuition, room, and board for all four years.
When I told Zara that, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, “Grandma Lorraine is still taking care of us.”
She was right.
The summer of 2022 was quiet. I returned to the bench full-time. I threw myself into my work with a renewed sense of purpose.
I started volunteering with a nonprofit organization that provided legal resources and mentorship to teenage mothers. I gave talks at high schools about resilience, the power of education, and the importance of not letting other people define your worth.
I told my story carefully and selectively.
And I watched the faces of those young girls as they listened.
I saw recognition in their eyes.
I saw hope.
And then, in October of 2023, something happened that no one could have predicted. Something that brought everything full circle in a way that felt almost too extraordinary to be real.
I received notification that a new case had been assigned to my docket. It was a civil matter, a dispute involving property and financial assets filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court.
I glanced at the case file as part of my regular docket review, and I froze.
The names of the plaintiffs were Dale Wills and Connie Wills.
The name of the defendant was Tanya Felton, my younger sister.
I immediately recused myself.
I could not hear a case involving my own parents. That was obvious.
But before I transferred the file, I read enough of the complaint to understand what was happening.
My parents were suing Tanya over a separate financial dispute related to property they claimed she had taken from them. It was a bitter, ugly family fight about money and control, and it had nothing to do with me.
The case was reassigned to Judge Ellen Hartley, a colleague of mine.
I thought that was the end of my involvement.
But several months later, another case came across my desk that did involve me in a way I never saw coming.
In February of 2024, my docket for the spring term was finalized. Among the cases assigned to me was a civil matter that had been transferred from Bullitt County to Jefferson County due to a jurisdictional issue.
The case involved a petition for the establishment of a constructive trust filed by DJ, my older brother, Dale Jr. Wills.
The defendant was listed as the estate of Lorraine Wills.
But when I read the full complaint, I realized I was not just a potential witness.
I was effectively the real target.
The petition alleged that Grandma Lorraine had made verbal promises to all of her grandchildren about sharing her estate equally and that the formal trust she had established was inconsistent with those promises. DJ was asking the court to impose a constructive trust, a legal remedy that would require the beneficiary, me, to distribute a portion of the trust assets to the other grandchildren.
The theory was creative, but legally weak.
Constructive trusts require clear evidence of fraud or unjust enrichment, and Lorraine Wills’s trust had already been upheld by Judge Kimble in Bullitt County.
But here was the problem.
The case had been transferred to Jefferson County and randomly assigned to my docket.
DJ and his attorney apparently did not know which judge would be hearing the case. The assignment was done by a computer system that distributed cases based on availability and caseload.
It was blind.
It was random.
And it had landed in my courtroom.
When I saw the file, I knew I had to recuse myself.
There was no question about that.
You cannot hear a case involving your own brother, your own family, your own inheritance.
I began preparing the recusal paperwork immediately, but the case was not scheduled for a hearing for several weeks, and in the meantime the initial status conference had to happen.
In Jefferson County, the initial status conference is a brief procedural hearing where the judge confirms the parties, reviews the filings, and sets a schedule for discovery and motions. It is administrative. It takes 15 minutes. And in many cases, the parties and their attorneys do not know which judge they will be appearing before until they walk into the courtroom.
The status conference was scheduled for March 8, 2024.
It was a Friday.
My docket that day had 11 cases, all routine matters.
The Wills case was number seven on the list.
I sat on the bench that morning in my black robe with the seal of the Commonwealth of Kentucky on the wall behind me. I had already prepared the recusal order. It was sitting in a folder on my desk, ready to be read into the record.
I was going to announce my recusal, transfer the case, and move on with my day.
It was going to be simple, procedural, and unremarkable.
But the moment that followed was none of those things.
At approximately 10:45 in the morning, the bailiff called the case: Dale Junior Wills versus the Estate of Lorraine Wills.
I watched as the parties entered the courtroom.
DJ came in first. He was wearing a suit that did not fit him quite right, and his face had the ruddy, weathered look of a man who had spent too many years in the sun.
Behind him came my parents. My father, now 69, walking with his cane. My mother, 67, her hair completely gray, her face set in that hard expression I knew so well.
Craig Felton was there.