I drove to Frank’s that same night, paint still on my hands. He opened the door, looked at the yellow paper in my fist, and just kind of nodded slow. “I wondered if you’d ever find that,” he said.

He had his own copy in a kitchen drawer. The nurse remembered signing it plain as day. And here’s the thing about the law that Todd, the smart one, was banking on us never learning. The later will wins. Dad’s handwritten one was dated after the one Todd filed. Which means my brother, an attorney, knowingly filed a will he knew was dead and buried. That’s not a mix-up. That has a name, and it has a penalty, and it can cost a man his license to ever practice law again.

I haven’t turned him in yet. I keep telling myself I will. Carol’s already crying about Christmas and how things will never be the same. And maybe that makes me a coward too, just like I was about the driving. But every time I pick up the phone, I look at that watch he left me, and I finally get why he picked it. So I’d always know exactly how late I was.

Frank stepped back and waved me inside before I could say no. His kitchen smelled like coffee gone cold and that menthol rub old men use on their knees. He pulled a folded copy out of the same drawer he kept his bag clips in, smoothed it on the table, and slid it toward me like it might break.

“Your daddy made me promise,” he said. “Said if anything ever felt off, I was to hang onto mine.”

I asked him what that meant. Off how.

Frank rubbed the back of his neck. “He didn’t trust Todd to do right.

He never said it mean. He just said it tired.” Then he told me how Dad used to talk on those long drives to the clinic. How he’d stare out the window the whole way and not say much, then right before they pulled in he’d come out with something. One time it was, “Frank, you’re the only one who shows up.” Just like that. Then he’d go quiet again.

I had to set my coffee down. Because I was one of the ones who didn’t show up, and now I knew Dad had noticed every single time.

“He wasn’t trying to punish anybody,” Frank said. “Three ways. Even. That’s all he wanted.” He tapped the paper. “Even the watch. He picked that out special for you. Said it had to be you.”

I didn’t ask what that meant either. I already knew, the way you know a thing in your gut before your head catches up.

I drove home with both copies on the passenger seat and Frank’s porch light getting small in my mirror. Carol called twice and I let it ring. Todd called once. I let that ring too.