The Will I Rewrote Alone Became the Loudest Word I Ever Spoke to My Children

Nathaniel set down his pen and studied me for a long moment. He asked if I was certain, if I wanted to sleep on a decision made in grief. I told him grief had nothing to do with it. I had done my grieving beside an empty row of chairs while my children sipped champagne. This was not sorrow talking. This was clarity, finally arrived after fifty-four years.

He nodded and began drafting. But as he wrote, he paused and asked a question that stopped my breath. Did I know, he said, that Edmund had come to see him alone six months before he died, and had left a sealed letter with instructions that it only be opened if the children failed to attend his funeral?

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Aria Lexicon is the pen name of the writer and editor behind The Daily Signal, a site for original short fiction about families, grudges, awkward neighbors and the small decisions that turn into big ones. Every story is invented; every character is made up. When She isn't writing, She's reading other people's stories and trying to figure out why the good ones work.

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