“She went to all this trouble over a woman she kept calling unfit.”

Silas rose beside me. The bond warmed with something fierce and answering, but he let me reach the next words myself.

“She wanted me frightened of what she could take from me. She never wanted me asking what I could take back.”

My palms flattened against the desk. For the first time, the thought of Sabine hearing my name brought something besides dread.

“Put it back.”

Pell glanced toward Miriam. I stepped into his line of sight.

“My name. In the living register.”

“I can suspend the death notation and enter an active claim pending formal correction. Final recovery of the estate requires—”

“Then start with what you can do.”

He reached for his pen. “The notice goes to the current administrator.”

“Good.”

The word came easily. I wanted Sabine to open it. I wanted her to recognize the name she had been tracing and understand that I was finally looking back.

Miriam prepared the request. I read it before signing, checking the dates with the same care I brought to other people's accounts.

Beside me, Silas watched the pen move. When I finished, his fingers closed around mine under the desk, and I squeezed hard.

Pell entered the correction request through his office and obtained the receipt while we waited. He had started gathering his papers when his phone chimed.

His expression made Miriam hold out her hand.

“What is it?”

“The administrator's office requests that processing be deferred pending a capacity review.”

I stared at him. Then I looked down at the receipt already lying beside my signature.

“On what new evidence?” Miriam asked.

“None is attached.”

“Then preserve the request with the file. It doesn't withdraw my client's submission.”

Pell nodded. I watched him record it.

They had tried the same door again: question my fitness, keep control, make me wait. This time I had seen the hand reaching for the latch.

“Send the receipt to her office,” I said. “Make sure they have my name spelled correctly.”

Miriam placed my copy in front of me. Beside the new entry, the old death notation remained visible as part of the record. I was glad nobody had erased it cleanly. Let whoever opened this file next see what had been done.

I folded the receipt into my mother's letter. Later, we would fight over the land and the money. Today, they had failed to keep me buried.

After they left, my knees began to shake. Silas caught my chair and guided me into it before I could pretend otherwise.

“That was frightening,” I admitted.

He crouched in front of me. “I know.”

“I wanted her to receive it anyway.”

His smile came slowly. “I noticed.”

I touched his cheek, feeling the roughness beneath my fingers. He turned his face into my palm, and the tenderness of it almost hurt after holding myself upright through that meeting.

“She worked so hard,” I whispered. “My mother. She shouldn't have had to.”

He drew me forward until my forehead rested against his. I let myself cry then, holding his shoulders while his hand moved gently over my back.

When I could speak again, I asked, “Does knowing change anything for you?”

“I still want you stealing from my plate and complaining about my towels.”

“You fold them wrong.”

“You'll have years to correct me.”

I kissed him before he could say anything else. He held the back of my neck, his thumb warm below my healed mark, and stayed close when I drew away.

Later, Sophie sat at my desk drawing ears on my grocery list. Maeve had reported a comfortable morning, with no further hearing trouble.

“What color was Grandma's wolf?” Sophie asked.

“I don't know, sweetheart.”

She left the little wolf beside our drawn house uncolored and pushed the crayons toward me. “We can do it when you know.”

I touched her hair. “Yes. We can.”

That afternoon, Miriam called about my mother's map. Maintenance had lowered the lake, exposing the old house's upper entrance. The land custodian had agreed to a supervised inspection once a surveyor checked access.

“The registry places a records vault there,” she said. “The original covenant could establish the limits of the council's authority.”

Silas spread the map between us. My mother had drawn three steps beneath a stone doorway, with tiny words beside them that I had mistaken for shading.

The nursery wall. Behind the sleeping wolves.