My Son Came Back After 20 Years When He Heard I Was Sick. He Wanted The Will.

The sound of a heavy cardboard lid sliding off a box has never sounded so sweet to my ears. It was a friction-heavy, scraping sound, like sandpaper moving across a wooden table, and it echoed in the silent, mahogany-paneled office of my lawyer, Mr. Henderson. My son, Kyle, was sitting across from me, his knuckles white as he gripped the edges of that box. He looked like a kid on Christmas morning, if that kid was a forty-year-old man wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit and trying desperately to hide the fact that he was only here for the payout. I sat in my wheelchair, a blanket draped over my legs, my oxygen cannula itching my nose, watching him with the eyes of a hawk disguised as a frail, dying old woman. The air in the room was thick with anticipation, smelling of old paper, lemon furniture polish, and Kyle’s overpowering cologne, which he probably bought specifically to mask the scent of the farm he despised so much.

Kyle had spent the last three weeks pretending to be the dutiful son. He had fluffed my pillows, brought me lukewarm soup, and talked endlessly about how much he missed "home," despite not having set foot on the property in two decades. He thought I was buying it. He thought his sudden reappearance right after the doctors gave me the "six months to live" diagnosis was subtle. It wasn't. It was about as subtle as a neon sign flashing the word "Inheritance" over his head. But I had played along. Oh, I had played the part of the grateful, senile mother perfectly. I let him wheel me around. I let him hold my hand while he texted on his phone with his other hand. I even squeezed out a few tears when he told me he was sorry for losing touch. And now, we were at the finish line. Or rather, he thought we were at the finish line. I knew we were actually standing on a trapdoor.

Mr. Henderson, who has been my lawyer and friend since before Kyle was even born, sat behind his massive desk with a poker face that would put professional gamblers to shame. He had placed the box in front of Kyle moments ago. It was a sturdy, nondescript archive box, but it was heavy. When Henderson set it down, it made a solid thud that vibrated through the table. You could see the dollar signs ignite in Kyle’s eyes the moment he heard that weight. He probably thought it was gold bars. Or maybe bundles of vintage cash I had buried in the backyard like some paranoid depression-era farmer. He didn't know that I had spent the last week carefully curating the contents of that box with my own two hands, selecting each item with a specific memory in mind.

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