A pin dropping to the floor could have been heard a mile away.

I readjusted my position on the crutches and stared at Father who looked a tad too stunned to make any comment. His eyes were wide and I could almost see his brain working overtime to try and process what I said. Uncle Christopher looked less stunned and more mildly impressed, although I didn't know why since I hadn't put forward any form of case just yet. Mother just looked tired, not that I could blame her. It had been a long few weeks.

"We've been over this, Izzy. We can't prove that Mother did anything wrong," Father said.

"No," I said, hopping into the room, "but we can prove that the will Mr Greenway read isn't the most up to date will and we can probably prove the will he does have wasn't signed by Grandfather which makes it invalid."

"I'm curious to know where this is going," Uncle Christopher said. "Go on, Izzy, what's your case?"

I grinned. "On the day the will was read out, Father said that it had been dated from February, but Marsh said that he took Grandfather to Mr Greenway's office the day before he left for Ireland."

"That doesn't prove that he made any changes to his will, just that he went to Mr Greenway's office."

"Except that Grandfather told me that was what he went to do. He said he wanted to make adjustments just in case something happened with the ship, which had been the reason why he didn't want to go in the first place. The will he made at the start of the month is more recent, so if we can find it, whatever is written on the one in February is thrown out the window. That, and I don't think the February will is Father's anyway."

"But we need to find the will he made at the start of the month and hope that it doesn't say the same thing. If Mr Greenway is somehow involved in it, as I assume you are getting at here, then he probably disposed of the April will." Father said.

"Grandfather kept a copy of everything in the house."

Father sighed and shook his head. "We've been through everything, we didn't find any documentation like that."

He had a point. Through packing up the house for moving out, no additional paperwork had been found other than documents he had to sign for work. If he had a secondary copy of a will, we would have found it by now but it appeared to have disappeared into thin air. At least we had the other documentation he signed, though. We can prove that Grandfather didn't sign the will if we compare the signature on the documentation to his signature on the will.

That would make the February will invalid, but it didn't answer the question about what would happen to Grandfather's estate. We needed the other will to confirm what Grandfather really wanted to do with his estate, but we would have to find it first and I knew that would be difficult. There were only a few hours left before he had to hand over the keys to Mr Greenway so Grandmother would have access to the house and that we needed more time.

Father turned and directed his attention towards the portrait of Grandfather that had yet to be moved. I wished I could talk to him, ask Grandfather where he had put the will so that we might be able to save the house, his house. He would know what to do, then again, if he were still here, we wouldn't be facing such a big uncertainty about the future of the house.

"We might not have the most recent will, not yet anyway, but we have the documentation he did sign that can be compared to his signature on the will Mr Greenway has," I said.

"That's true. Any proof that he didn't sign the will would make it invalid anyway and might buy you some time to find the correct one," Uncle Christopher said.

"What about his witnesses? Doesn't the law state that the Testator has to have at least two witnesses? If the will Mr Greenway has doesn't have the witness signatures, or names of people Grandfather actually knows on it, that would also invalidate it, right?"

Uncle Christopher nodded. "That's right. Did you swallow one of my law books?"

"I read one of them when I was waiting for Marsh to pick me up once. It was all listed under the Wills Act from 1837."

"We'll make a lawyer of you, yet, Izzy." He laughed. "I have a friend who specialises in this sort of law. You have until seven this evening to leave, correct?"

"Yes, an odd time if you ask me, but it was Mother's decision."

"Alright. If you can hand over any documentation your father signed, I can take it all to him and see what he thinks about a potential case to get this will made invalid."

"We can try and find the will Grandfather made at the start of the month. It has to be here somewhere."

"I'll meet you at the office before seven. With any luck, Adam will have something we can use or at least we can invalidate the will."

Father nodded and I watched him cross the room to a satchel that had been leaning against the wall with everything else we were to move out. He grabbed it and pulled out a stack of papers, handing them over to Uncle Christopher who thumbed through them briefly and then left the room at such a speed that he looked out of focus. I heard him knock the coat stand as he went and then listened to the sound of the front door opening and closing.

I shifted my weight on the crutches, trying to ignore the hand cramp that had started to set in and the pain from the bar pressing into my armpit. Uncle Christopher might be able to stop the will from being enforced, but we had to find the most recent one in order for Grandfather's estate to be sorted. If we didn't find it, I didn't know what would happen to the estate and the house and if Mr Greenway had gone along with Grandmother and Aunt Matilda, then the estate remaining with him would be awful.

We had to find the will Grandfather made before he left for Ireland or the estate would be lost regardless of whether Uncle Christopher's friend could come through with the signature. There was so much resting on this will, so much resting on whether we could prove that the will was fake and that Grandfather never wanted the estate to go to his estranged wife.

There were only a few hours left to go and with everything packed in boxes of suitcases ready to be moved to our house in London, finding that piece of paper would be impossible. On crutches, I knew I wouldn't be that helpful since I couldn't get around very fast on my crutches, but we had to find that will.

"We only have a few hours to find the will and I have no idea where we should start," Father said.

"Mr Greenway had all of his paperwork, surely if there was a second copy of the will, he would have it in amongst that."

"Not necessarily," I said. "Grandfather never put anything in a place you'd expect to find it and his office was always a mess, he wouldn't keep something that important in a mess. Knowing him, he kept it under his mattress or something."

"But we've moved the mattress and everything else in his room when we packed up. There was no sign of it."

"It has to be here somewhere and we just haven't stumbled across it yet. If we invalidate the will Mr Greenway has, we have to have the real one for it to take its place or Mr Greenway gets the estate until something else can be decided."

"Then we get looking. It has to be here," Father said.

"Somewhere in this mess," Mother said.

"Mess is good. Grandfather thought in mess so it might make things easier."

"You definitely take after him."

I grinned and hopped across the room to one of the boxes that contained Grandfather's things. Since I couldn't really kneel down, I dropped down onto my bottom and pulled the box closer to me so I could look through it and not potentially do any more harm to my ankle. The box didn't contain anything too exciting, just some of the small trinkets that Grandfather kept in his bedroom.

There were small bird statues that he kept on his window sill, a paperweight in the shape of a frog that I was certain he got for me, and a piece of embroidery I had done of several small frogs. Mother used to set me embroidery tasks in the winter as it gave me something to do and I always used to stitch frogs, although not much changed when I got older. Grandfather kept a framed one in his bedroom even though the stitching was far from perfect and the frog looked more like a splodge.

The embroidery belonged on Grandfather's wall, all of his things belonged in his room and he belonged with us. Even if he couldn't be with us, we had to keep the house and put all of his things back where they belonged, even if he would never claim them back. I continued to root through the box in search of a slip of paper that might contain the will and the information we needed. It doesn't appear to be in the box.

I pushed the box away and grabbed another, rooting through it but once again turning up empty and without a shred of paper to be seen anywhere. Any and all pieces of paper found in the house that belonged to Grandfather had been taken to Mr Greenway and I started to think that he might have been given the will. Maybe Grandfather didn't hide it in a strange place after all and I just hoped it might be in the house somewhere.

It had to be here.

It just had to be.

"I can't find anything and we're running out of time," Father said, checking his watch. "We only have an hour before we need to hand over these keys and we still need to make it into the city."

"There are still a few more boxes to look through, and an hour is plenty of time," Mother said in an attempt to be reassuring.

"What if he kept it at his office? All of that paperwork went to Mr Greenway if it didn't relate to his patients. It could have been there."

"We'd have seen it. You went through that paperwork yourself when you took on his patients. It wasn't there."

"It'll be in the house somewhere, in a place no one would think to look," I said, placing a rolled-up tie back into the box.

"Except all of his things are in boxes or suitcases. Nothing is in a place you would think to look."

Father had a point. All of his things had been moved and were no longer in a place someone would expect to think. Still, it had to be there but it had to be somewhere Grandfather would think was funny. He used to hide my Christmas presents in the kitchen, tucked behind the vegetables in the pantry so I wouldn't go looking for them. I found them so he moved them to the stables.

Never in the same place twice.

I looked over at the portrait of Grandfather on the mantel, the last thing to be moved. He stared at me with what looked to be a glint in his eye and a small smile on his face like he knew something we didn't.

He wouldn't have.

Would he?

I grabbed my crutches and stood up, making my way across the room to the mantel and the portrait. Balancing on my foot, I reached up and removed the portrait from the hook. It wobbled a little in my hands but when I had a good grip on it, I turned it over to look at the back of the frame the portrait had been encased in. Tucked into the small clips on the frame, was an envelope. I pulled the envelope out of the clip and passed it to Father.

He looked at me and furrowed his eyes, running his thumb under the seal to open the envelope. The moment he pulled the piece of paper out, his eyes lit up and I knew we had found what we had been looking for.

We had found the real will and it had been staring us in the face for the past few weeks.

~~~

A/N - It's a double update week! Why I hear you ask? Because we hit 89K on The Factory Girl, 30K on The Serving Girl and 10K on Little Sparrow all in one week! Woooo!!!!

Questions! Do you think Izzy is right about the will? Is the one Mr Greenway has fake?

Comment below!

First Published - November 20th, 2021