Part 2: My millionaire husband left me nothing in his will after 48 years of marriage except a note with an address — when I arrived there, what I saw made me fall to my knees.

Not just a store.

A home for people who need somewhere to begin again.

I stared at the drawings.

The little household goods store where Thomas and I had once worked sixteen-hour days.

The place where our marriage had begun to grow alongside our business.

He had bought it back.

And he'd been planning to turn it into something entirely new.

I looked at the final page.

At the top was a name.

THE EXTRA CHAIR PROJECT

Underneath was a sentence written in my own handwriting.

I recognized it instantly.

I'd written it in a notebook during our first year of marriage.

“If there's room at the table, there's room for one more.”

I began crying.

Because after forty-eight years, Thomas still remembered.

And somewhere inside that complicated, imperfect man, the boy I'd fallen in love with in college had never completely disappeared.

CHAPTER 7: THE COURTROOM REVEALED WHO THE REAL FATHER WAS—BUT MY BIGGEST VICTORY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY

The hearing took place on a rainy Thursday morning.