Second Will

One dead father. Two daughters cut almost entirely out of his will. And a twenty-year-old secret someone is still willing to kill for.When Thomas Halloway dies at the Devil's Teeth cliffs, everyone in the coastal town of Saltwood is ready to call it a tragic accident.His daughters aren't so sure.Wren Halloway is a nurse who survives by trusting facts, controlling chaos, and keeping her feelings carefully contained. Her younger sister, Skye, trusts instinct, music, and the uncomfortable feeling that something isn't right. They have spent years becoming opposites.Their father's death is about to force them together.Nine days before he died, Thomas signed a new will.The family home goes to his wife. Control of millions passes elsewhere. Wren and Skye, the daughters supposedly at the center of his life, are left just eighteen thousand dollars each.Then they see page four.Different paper. No initials. A mysterious payment connected to Lila Venn, a sixteen-year-old girl who vanished from Saltwood more than twenty years earlier.And suddenly the will is no longer about money.A missing phone. A hidden ledger. A childhood drawing Skye doesn't remember making. Anonymous warnings. A forgotten flute. A father who may have spent decades paying for a terrible secret.The deeper the sisters dig, the clearer it becomes that Thomas didn't simply leave behind an estate.He left them a trail.But Saltwood is the kind of town where everyone remembers everything and tells only half of it. Someone has spent twenty years protecting what happened to Lila Venn. Someone knew Thomas was finally ready to break his silence.And someone is watching Wren and Skye get dangerously close to the truth.To discover what really happened at the Devil's Teeth, the sisters will have to answer a question more painful than who killed their father:What if the man they loved was never innocent at all?The Second Will is an atmospheric, emotionally charged mystery of inheritance, sisterhood, buried guilt, small-town loyalties, and the devastating difference between protecting a family and protecting a lie.Some families inherit money. Some inherit houses. Wren and Skye inherit the truth.The central claims in this description come directly from the manuscript, including Thomas's death, the replacement page, the $18,000 inheritances, the connection to Lila Venn, the sisters' contrasting approaches, and the larger Saltwood mystery.