He established that she had performed real work and earned real money.
Captain Vale did not challenge those facts.
Neither did I.
Liora was not a person who had never worked.
She was a person who had never maintained employment for the required period.
That distinction mattered.
Arvett tried to connect the separate jobs into one continuous professional career.
But the gaps remained.
Liora had already admitted that she had stopped working during several of them.
By the time she stepped down from the witness stand, even my mother seemed to understand the problem.
If I qualified and Liora didn’t, the trust would not be divided.
Its distributable assets would pass to me.
My mother had brought the case intending to eliminate my inheritance.
Now the evidence was moving toward the exact opposite result.
But she had one more argument.
And it was the one she had been preparing since Dad’s funeral.
She wanted to make the jury feel that the legal question was morally wrong.
When Arvett called her back to testify, she walked toward the witness stand with tears already running down her face.
She held a tissue against her mouth.
“I just want what’s fair,” she said.
Arvett approached carefully.
“Mrs. Voss, why did you bring this petition?”
“Because my husband would never have wanted Evelyn to take everything.”
I looked down.
She had said my name.
For the first time that morning, she had used my name instead of calling me the defendant.
“Why do you believe that?” Arvett asked.
My mother pressed the tissue against her eyes.
“Because Liora was there.”
She looked toward the jury.
“When Everett was sick, Liora was there. She was in the house. She brought him meals. She helped me. She saw what happened to him.”
Her voice cracked.
“I watched my husband disappear a little every day. I watched him forget where he put his glasses. I watched him struggle to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen.”
My chest tightened.
Those things were true.
Dad had suffered.
My mother had been exhausted.
Liora had spent time at home.
They had experienced parts of his illness that I had not.
I had never denied that.
My mother continued.
“And where was Evelyn?”
She pointed toward me.
“Gone.”
Arvett let the word hang in the air.
“Mrs. Voss, is that why you believe your younger daughter should inherit?”
“Yes.”
She gripped the edge of the witness stand.
