Chapter 5 - The Fourth Folder
The fourth folder wasn't blue. It was a pale, aged yellow, tucked between the thick green felt of the desk blotter and the heavy oak frame of the library desk in the main house.
Rowan found it at three o'clock on Sunday morning while I was sleeping under the heavy influence of the contraction-stopping drip at the hospital.
He had driven back to Cedar Hill alone, leaving two private security guards he had hired from an Atlanta agency standing outside my hospital door with strict instructions to let no one pass—not even hospital staff—without checking their credentials against a printed list.
The house was empty when he walked through the front door. The stain from Celeste’s wine had been scrubbed clean by Lena before she left, but the faint, sour smell of iron and fermented grapes still hung in the cool air of the foyer.
Rowan walked straight into the library, switching on the overhead brass banker’s lamp. He lifted the desk blotter, pulled out the yellow folder I had told him about, and opened it under the green glass shade.
Inside were six handwritten letters on personal stationery bearing the crest of the Armand family—letters written by his father, Samuel Armand, four months before he died of lung cancer.
Rowan’s breath caught in his throat as he recognized his father’s sharp, forward-slanting cursive.
To the Trustees of the Armand Family Trust,
It is my explicit direction that upon my death, the third-floor apartment and the surrounding ten acres of the northern parcel shall be severed from the main estate and placed into a separate, restricted trust for my daughter, Celeste. This allocation is made with the understanding that Celeste shall have no claim, administrative authority, or voting power over the primary residential accounts or the corporate logistics entities managed by my son, Rowan.
Should Celeste attempt to challenge this division or interfere with the primary heir’s management of the main house, her interest in the northern parcel shall be immediately revoked and assigned to the primary trust’s charitable reserve.
Rowan sat down heavily in his father’s leather armchair, holding the yellowed paper under the green light.
Attached to the back of the third letter was a signed receipt from a private courier service in Atlanta—dated three days after their father’s funeral four years ago.
The signature on the delivery line wasn't David Vance’s.
It was Celeste’s.
She had intercepted the codicil before it reached the probate court. She had kept the letter hidden in her brother’s library for forty-eight months, using her apparent "co-ownership" of the estate to maintain her position in the house, to control the staff, and to make Rowan believe that keeping her at Cedar Hill was a legal obligation handed down by their father.
Rowan closed his eyes. A single, dry sob rose in his throat, but he swallowed it down, his jaw setting into a line that was as hard as the marble in the foyer.
He pulled his phone from his coat and dialed David Vance’s home number.
The line rang twice before the old trustee answered, his voice gravelly with sleep. “Rowan? Is Abigail all right?”
“Abigail is stable,” Rowan said, his eyes fixed on his father’s signature. “David, I’m standing in the library. I have the codicil.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. The faint sound of paper rustling came through the speaker as Vance sat up in bed.
“The 2022 codicil?” Vance asked softly. “The one Celeste said was destroyed in the garage fire?”
“It wasn't destroyed,” Rowan said, his voice cold and flat. “It was sitting under the blotter on Father’s desk. She’s been using forged power-of-attorney documents to draw thirty-two thousand dollars a month from the estate account since last March.”
“My God,” Vance whispered. “Rowan... if that codicil is valid, Celeste has no legal right to be within five hundred yards of the main house. She’s been trespassing for three years.”
“I know,” Rowan said. “And I want the formal eviction order signed by a judge before the sun comes up.”
“Where is she now?” Vance asked.
May you like
“She’s at the St. Regis downtown,” Rowan said, looking out the long library window toward the dark, wet driveway. “She thinks she’s coming back tomorrow afternoon to pick up her trunks.”
“She won't be picking up her trunks,” Vance said, his voice hardening into the tone of a attorney who had managed Georgia estates for forty years. “I’ll have the county sheriff at the gate house by seven a.m.”
