ACT 2 — BUILDING TENSION
In the final months of Harrison’s life, Wesley visited just enough to be seen. He brought coffee he had not made, asked vague questions about accounts, and once measured the living room wall with his eyes while pretending to admire old photographs.
Jada noticed every small hunger in him. The quick glance at the deed box. The questions about appraisals. The careful way he said the house was “worth something now,” as if worth belonged only to whoever wanted cash.
Francine heard those questions and translated them into need. Wesley was stressed. Wesley had pressure. Wesley needed support. By then, his $340,000 gambling debt was no longer whispered about; it hovered around him like smoke.
Harrison understood more than either of them knew. Three weeks before he died, he asked Jada to meet him at Vance & Bell Legal on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. The building smelled of wet wool, old paper, and coffee.
Thomas Vance, Harrison’s attorney of thirty years, waited in the conference room. Harrison sat with an oxygen machine clicking beside him and a black fountain pen trembling between his fingers. He looked weak, but his eyes were absolutely awake.
He slid a sealed envelope across the table and tapped it twice. “If they try it at the funeral,” he whispered, “let Thomas speak first.” Jada wanted to ask what he meant, but grief had already made him tired.
Harrison did not explain every detail that day. He only made her promise not to argue if Wesley tried to make the house sound like family business. “Let paper do what pleading never could,” he said.
Jada kept that sentence under her ribs through the hospital visits, through the final quiet week, and through the morning Harrison died. She thought knowing something was coming would make it easier. It did not.
