Derek Goes All In

The summons arrived by certified mail exactly three days after the harvest festival — three days during which Sam and I exchanged polite but pointedly formal remarks about estate business, both too proud and too scared to make the first move toward an actual conversation, settling instead into the same cautious, distant coexistence we'd slipped into after our fight.

The letter came from Derek's lawyer — a formal, meticulously drafted legal notice of intent to challenge the legitimacy of our marriage on the grounds of "substantial doubts regarding the genuine marital intent of the parties," backed by a list of several neighbors willing to testify to "behavior atypical of an ordinary marriage," including separate residences prior to the wedding, the haste of the union, and the absence of any public relationship history before the engagement was announced.

"He actually did it," I said, reading the letter at the kitchen table with shaking hands, feeling icy dread spreading through my chest. "He actually filed suit."

Sam, walking into the kitchen a minute later, took the letter from my hands, and his face, as he read it, shifted from disbelief to something far grimmer and more resolved.

"The witness list," he said quietly, studying the attached document. "Mrs. Colfield from the neighboring farm is on here. She was at our wedding, Claire. She cried during the vows."

"Derek probably pressured her," I guessed. "Or paid her. Given the scale of money he stands to make from Meredith Development, bribing a few witnesses is pocket change for him."

We called Mr. Pembrooke that same evening, and his tone, usually calm and professionally detached, sounded noticeably more serious this time than in our previous conversation.

"This is a real threat," he admitted honestly. "Derek's retained an experienced lawyer who specializes in exactly this kind of case — challenging marriages as fraudulent in order to void inheritance rights. There are precedents of successful suits along these lines. We need solid counterarguments, and we need them fast, given that the court date has already been set for three weeks from now — considerably sooner than the original six-month deadline, which I suspect was a deliberate tactic on Derek's part to catch you off guard."

Three weeks. That was exactly how much time we had left to prove in a court of law what I myself had refused, two weeks earlier, to be fully certain of — that our marriage, which had begun as a business arrangement, had long since become something real, something far deeper than any contract drawn up at a kitchen table two months before.

"We need real evidence of a shared life," Mr. Pembrooke said, moving on to the practical side of things. "Financial documents showing overlapping budgets, wherever possible and appropriate. Testimony from witnesses in your favor — friends, family, neighbors willing to confirm the sincerity of your union. And, frankly, it would be enormously helpful if the two of you could give the court a convincing and consistent account of your relationship's history, leaving no room for doubt about its authenticity."

That last requirement hung heavy in the kitchen air, given the circumstances of the last three days — Sam and I, barely speaking to each other beyond household matters, now expected to present a united front in court, convincingly demonstrating the depth and sincerity of feelings I myself had so recently allowed myself to doubt out loud.

After the call with the lawyer, we sat at the same kitchen table in tense silence, both aware of the absurdity, and at the same time the tragedy, of the situation we found ourselves in.

"We need to decide what we're going to say in court," Sam said finally, his voice professionally businesslike, stripped of all the warmth of the last few days. "I suppose that's the only thing we can still talk to each other about right now without risking another fight."

Something in that sentence — dry, distant, without a trace of the closeness we used to share — hit me harder than any open anger could have, because it laid bare the scale of the damage I'd done with my own hands three days ago, giving in to panic and unfounded doubt instead of trust.

"Sam," I said quietly, "before we talk about legal strategy, I want to apologize for what I said at the festival. You were right. I let words Maggie said in passing months ago devalue everything real we built together. That was unfair to you, and I'm genuinely sorry."

He looked at me with a long, searching stare, as if trying to gauge how sincere my words were after three days of cold distance between us.

"I understand where your doubts came from," he said finally, his voice softening, though the distance between us was still nearly physical. "You've spent your whole life proving to yourself that you deserve to be loved not out of calculation, not because someone nudged someone else toward the decision, but because you were genuinely chosen, out of every other possible option. I understand the fear that it might not quite be that simple. But, Claire," he paused, as if gathering strength, "I need you to understand: even if Maggie once dropped some offhand comment, even if it somehow influenced my initial decision to help you — everything that happened after that first conversation in the cellar was entirely my own choice, made fresh, every single day, again and again, with no influence from anyone's words but my own feelings for you."

I felt tears rising to my eyes, this time not from panic but from relief mixed with shame at my own unfairness three days earlier.

"We have three weeks to convince the court our marriage is real," I said quietly. "But honestly, Sam, right now it matters a lot more to me to convince you that I truly, genuinely believe in the reality of what we have, no matter how it started."

He reached his hand across the table, and this time I took it without hesitation, feeling the familiar warmth of his touch slowly begin to melt the ice that had formed between us over the past three agonizing days.

"We have three weeks to prepare for court," he said quietly, squeezing my hand. "But it seems like we've got a much more urgent matter to deal with right now."

"What?" I asked, feeling my heart start to beat faster in anticipation.

"Learning to trust each other again," he said simply. "No doubts, no listening to outside voices trying to explain our own feelings to us for us. Just you and me, figuring out what's happening between us, with nobody else's opinion getting in the way."

Outside the kitchen window, it had started to rain — the first fall rain of the season, drumming on the guest cottage roof, the very roof Sam had repaired before anything between us had even started — and I thought that maybe, right now, facing a genuine threat of losing everything we'd both worked so hard for, we were finally ready to stop being afraid and trust each other completely, without reservation, whatever it took to prove that, not just to the court, but to ourselves, in the three weeks ahead.