I stared at the unknown number, my thumb hovering over the screen. The message contained only one sentence: “This is Gregory, your father’s attorney. We need to speak before Marguerite does something you cannot undo.” My stomach dropped. My father had a lawyer I had never met, and he was contacting me on the same night my stepmother had declared war. I called immediately. Gregory answered on the first ring, his voice low and cautious. He told me Marguerite’s claim that my father had transferred the beach house to her was not what it appeared to be. In fact, he said, the transfer had never been legally possible.

Then Gregory revealed something that made everything I thought I knew about the house collapse. My father had never actually owned the property. Three months before my mother died, she had placed the beach house into an irrevocable trust in my name because she suspected Marguerite might one day try to take it. When my father signed papers supposedly giving the house to his wife, he had transferred property that wasn’t his to give. But Gregory wasn’t calling only to explain that. He had discovered something else—evidence that could completely destroy Marguerite’s claim and finally put the house back where it belonged.