I read the sentence aloud, and my voice shook. “Loretta, the will they showed you was never signed by me. I signed another one, and a recording of the day I did is waiting below.” Lucia gasped, and Valentina looked up from her papers. Rafael lowered a lantern into the dark and climbed down the ladder, and moments later his voice floated up, hushed: “Mrs. Loretta, you need to see this.”

At the bottom, on a steel shelf, sat a fireproof case, a small digital recorder, and a thick binder labeled with an attorney’s name, Marian Holt. Rafael lifted the case onto the packed dirt, and I opened it with the brass key. Inside lay the true will, witnessed and notarized. Then tires crunched on the road above, and through the open trapdoor I heard Garrett’s voice shouting my name.