“She said you two were reviewing estate planning before marriage.”
“That’s normal,” Simone said.
Daniel ignored her.
Andre said:
“She asked how Lily’s trust would be handled if you married.”
Daniel knew the trust better than most fathers would.
He had been forced to.
Lily’s mother, Maya, had died four years earlier from complications following a sudden cerebral aneurysm.
Maya had been thirty-two.
Daniel had gone to work that morning married.
He returned to the hospital that night a widower.
Three-year-old Lily had spent the next month asking when her mother would come home.
Maya’s father had built a successful logistics company decades earlier. When he died, Maya inherited part of it. She never lived extravagantly.
After Lily’s birth, Maya placed most of her inheritance into a protected trust for their daughter.
By the time investment growth, insurance proceeds, and an additional inheritance from Maya’s grandmother were combined, the trust held approximately $2.4 million.
The money was not Daniel’s.
It was not family spending money.
It belonged to Lily.
The trust paid for education, medical expenses, specific developmental needs, and certain approved opportunities.
At twenty-five, Lily would receive substantial control.
Until then, Daniel and Andre’s firm shared fiduciary oversight under strict conditions Maya had designed with her own attorney.
Maya had once joked:
“If we ever become idiots, at least Lily’s college money will survive us.”
Daniel used to laugh.
He had not thought about that sentence in years.
Andre continued:
“At first Simone asked general questions. Marriage. Guardianship. Estate planning. Nothing necessarily unusual.”
Daniel stared at Simone.
She nodded quickly.
“Exactly.”
Andre said:
“Then she asked whether becoming Lily’s legal stepmother gave her any authority over distributions.”
Daniel’s stomach tightened.
Andre continued.
“I told her no.”
Simone said:
“That was a hypothetical question.”
Andre replied:
“Then you asked whether adoption would change that.”
Silence.
Daniel looked at Simone.
“You asked about adopting Lily?”
Simone’s tears began falling.
“I wanted us to be a real family.”
Daniel almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.