The author was inspired by these words in writing the title and this novel and gives thanks to THE ONE above.

Chapter 1: The Collapse
The cold marble floor of Hartwell & Associates pressed against Delores's cheek as she lay curled in the hallway, her body shaking with sobs that seemed to tear from the deepest part of her soul. The legal documents scattered around her like fallen leaves—pages of dense text that had just shattered her world with a few carefully crafted clauses that erased not just her identity, but her very existence.

"To receive the full inheritance as outlined in Section 4.2, the beneficiary must provide documented evidence of a monogamous heterosexual relationship, specifically a valid marriage certificate recognized by the state of Georgia. Furthermore, said beneficiary must be living in accordance with their birth-assigned gender as recorded on their original birth certificate."

The words echoed in her mind, each syllable a fresh wound. Timothy. They had written Timothy in the legal documents, as if the sixteen years she had lived as Delores meant nothing. As if the woman she had fought to become was just a phase, a delusion, something that could be erased with the stroke of a lawyer's pen.

After everything—the years of struggle to live authentically, the courage it had taken to transition at eighteen the moment she was legally free to do so, the hope that maybe, just maybe, her parents had found some measure of acceptance before their deaths—this. This legal trap that reduced her identity to a birth certificate, her truth to a lie they had forced her to live for the first eighteen years of her life.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, are you alright?" The voice belonged to a young paralegal who had emerged from one of the offices, her heels clicking uncertainly on the marble. "Should I call someone?"

Delores forced herself to sit up, her back against the cool wall. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, smearing mascara across her cheek. "I'm fine," she whispered, though the words felt like the same lies she'd been forced to tell as a child. "Just... processing some news."

The paralegal's expression softened with recognition—she'd probably seen this scene before, families torn apart by the cold machinery of probate law. But had she ever seen someone's entire existence legally negated? Had she ever witnessed the moment when parents reached from beyond the grave to deny their child's fundamental truth?

"Can I get you some water? Or maybe call your attorney?"

"No, thank you." Delores began gathering the scattered papers with trembling hands. Each page felt heavier than it should, weighted with the implications of what she'd just learned. Her parents, even in death, had found a way to punish her not just for loving women, but for daring to live as the daughter she had always been inside.

As she stood, her legs unsteady, Delores caught her reflection in the polished surface of the elevator doors. The woman looking back at her was real—more real than Timothy had ever been. This wasn't some costume or performance. This was who she had fought sixteen years to become, who she had been in her heart since childhood, even when forced to play the role of a son who never truly existed.

But those memories of pretending felt like they belonged to someone else now. Someone who had sat at her father's feet listening to bedtime stories while screaming inside that she wasn't the little boy everyone saw. Someone who had helped her mother bake cookies for church socials while dying a little more each day from having to hide her truth.

The elevator chimed softly as it arrived, and Delores stepped inside, clutching the legal papers to her chest like evidence of a crime. As the doors closed, she caught a glimpse of the paralegal still watching her with concern, and she managed a weak smile of gratitude.

Alone in the descending elevator, Delores closed her eyes and tried to breathe. The inheritance had never been about the money—not really. It had been about belonging, about being seen as their daughter rather than the ghost of a son who had never existed. Her parents had left her something, yes, but it was a pittance compared to what Craig and Beau would receive. The message was clear: Timothy was our child. You are not.

The elevator reached the ground floor with a gentle bump, and the doors slid open to reveal the busy lobby of the office building. People hurried past, absorbed in their own lives, their own dramas. None of them knew that Delores's very existence had just been legally challenged, that thirty-four years of life—sixteen of them lived authentically—had been reduced to a birth certificate that had never told the truth about who she was.

She walked through the lobby on unsteady legs, past the security desk and through the revolving door into the humid Georgia afternoon. The sun felt too bright, the air too thick. Everything seemed surreal, as if she were moving through the same nightmare she'd lived for the first eighteen years of her life—the nightmare of being seen as someone she wasn't.

Standing on the sidewalk, Delores pulled out her phone with shaking hands. She scrolled through her contacts, looking for someone to call, someone who might understand. But who could she tell? Who would care that her parents had found one final way to deny not just her choices, but her fundamental truth?

Her thumb hovered over Beau's number. Her younger brother, the one who had always been gentler than Craig, who had struggled with her transition but had at least tried to use her chosen name sometimes. But Beau was overseas, working security for some contractor in Iraq, and she couldn't burden him with this. Not when he was so far away, not when he was dealing with his own struggles about faith and family and what it meant to love someone whose very existence challenged everything he'd been taught.

Craig's number was there too, but calling him would be pointless. He was probably already celebrating, already calculating how much larger his share would be if he could successfully argue that Timothy was dead and Delores was just an imposter trying to claim a dead man's inheritance. The thought made her stomach turn.

Instead, she found herself dialing her therapist's office, but it went straight to voicemail. Dr. Martinez was probably with another patient, helping someone else navigate the treacherous waters of family rejection and identity denial.

"Dr. Martinez, it's Delores," she said after the beep, her voice barely above a whisper. "I need to talk. The will reading was today, and..." Her voice broke. "They're saying I'm not real. They're saying Timothy was their child, and I'm just... I don't know what they think I am."

She ended the call and stood there on the sidewalk, people flowing around her like water around a stone. The weight of the legal papers in her hands felt enormous, as if they contained not just words but the accumulated denial of a lifetime.

A memory surfaced unbidden: Christmas morning when she was eight years old, before she understood why the pretty dresses under the tree were never for her. Her father had lifted Timothy onto his shoulders to place the star on top of the tree, and her mother had clapped and said, "Perfect, son. Just perfect." But even then, even at eight, she had known it was wrong. She wasn't their son. She had never been their son, no matter how hard they had all pretended.

That little boy had been a performance, a lie they had all agreed to live. In his place stood a woman who had fought for every inch of authenticity, who had endured stares and whispers and worse, who had built a life of truth despite the cost. And yet, here she was, reduced to tears on a sidewalk because her parents had found one last way to tell her that the lie had been more real to them than she ever was.

Delores took a shuddering breath and looked up at the sky, where clouds were gathering for an afternoon thunderstorm. Maybe that was fitting. Maybe the weather should match the storm inside her heart.

"THE ONE," she whispered, using the name for the divine that felt most honest to her now, most inclusive of all the searching she'd done. "THE ONE, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know how to prove I'm real when they've decided I'm not."

The words felt small against the vastness of her hurt, but they were all she had. She folded the legal papers carefully and put them in her purse, then began the long walk to her car. Each step felt like a choice—to keep going, to keep fighting, to refuse to let this final denial erase the truth of who she was.

But as she walked, one thought kept echoing in her mind: How do you prove you exist to people who have already decided you don't?

The answer, she realized, might demand not just her soul, her life, her all—but the courage to live so authentically that even death couldn't diminish her truth.

Timothy had never existed, not really. But Delores was real, and she would not be erased.