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.

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

Chapter 2: Echoes of Before

The rain had started by the time Delores reached her apartment, fat droplets that matched the tears still threatening to spill from her eyes. She fumbled with her keys at the door, her hands still trembling from the afternoon's devastation. The familiar weight of her purse felt different now, heavy with the legal documents that had just redefined her existence—or rather, denied it entirely.

Inside her small but carefully curated space, Delores dropped her purse by the door and leaned against it, finally allowing herself to breathe. The apartment was her sanctuary, every piece chosen to reflect who she truly was. Soft pastels and flowing fabrics, photographs of friends who saw her for who she really was, books on gender studies and theology that had helped her understand herself. This was Delores's world, the life she had built from nothing after walking away from Timothy's prison at eighteen.

But tonight, even her sanctuary felt fragile, as if the legal papers in her purse could somehow contaminate the authenticity she had worked so hard to create.

She moved through the living room like a ghost, her fingers trailing over familiar objects that suddenly felt like artifacts from a life that might not legally exist. The framed photo of her college graduation—her first milestone as Delores. The small ceramic angel her friend Maria had given her when she'd been baptized in the progressive Methodist church downtown. The rainbow flag pin she'd worn to her first Pride parade, terrified and exhilarated in equal measure.

All of it real. All of it hers. All of it apparently meaningless in the eyes of the law and her parents' final judgment.

Delores sank into her favorite armchair, the one she'd found at a thrift store and reupholstered herself in soft lavender fabric. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift backward, not to the painful present but to the memories that had sustained her through the darkest times—the moments when she had glimpsed who she really was, even while trapped in Timothy's life.

Christmas morning, age six. She had snuck into her parents' room before dawn, not to wake them but to try on her mother's silk nightgown. For ten precious minutes, she had stood before the full-length mirror, seeing herself—really seeing herself—for the first time. The flowing fabric, the way it made her feel graceful and right. Then her father's voice from the bed: "Timothy? What are you doing, son?" The shame that followed had burned for weeks.

Easter Sunday, age ten. The church had organized an egg hunt, and she had desperately wanted to join the girls in their pastel dresses and patent leather shoes. Instead, she stood with the boys in their stiff suits and clip-on ties, watching from across an invisible divide that felt as wide as an ocean. When little Sarah Mitchell had offered to share her chocolate bunny, Delores had felt a warmth that had nothing to do with the candy and everything to do with being seen, even briefly, as one of the girls.

Her sixteenth birthday. The last birthday party as Timothy. Her parents had tried so hard to make it special—a cake shaped like a football, gifts that screamed "masculine teenager." But all she could think about was the calendar on her bedroom wall, where she had been marking off days until her eighteenth birthday like a prisoner counting down to freedom. Two more years. Just two more years of pretending.

The memories were bittersweet now, tinged with the knowledge that her parents had never truly seen her. Even in those moments when she had tried to show them glimpses of her real self—the time she had asked for a doll for Christmas, the day she had come home from school with painted nails courtesy of a sympathetic friend—they had responded with gentle but firm correction. "Boys don't play with dolls, sweetheart." "Let's get that polish off before your father sees."

They had thought they were protecting Timothy from the world's cruelty. They had never understood that Timothy was the cruelty, that forcing her to live as someone she wasn't was the deepest wound of all.

Delores opened her eyes and reached for the photo album on the side table—not the one with family pictures, but the one she had created herself. Pictures of her real life, her authentic life. The day she had legally changed her name. Her first job interview as Delores, terrified but determined. The moment she had met her chosen family at the support group, people who understood what it meant to live your truth despite the cost.

She turned to a page near the middle: a photo from her twenty-first birthday party. She was surrounded by friends who loved her exactly as she was, wearing a dress that made her feel beautiful, laughing at something someone had said. The joy in her face was radiant, unguarded. This was who she had become when freed from the prison of other people's expectations.

But even as she looked at the photo, she could hear Craig's voice in her head, the words he had spoken so coldly in the lawyer's office: "Timothy was our brother. We don't know who this person is."

The rain was coming down harder now, drumming against her windows like an accusation. Delores set the photo album aside and walked to the kitchen, needing something to do with her hands. She put the kettle on for tea, going through the familiar motions that usually brought comfort. But tonight, even the simple act of making tea felt loaded with meaning. Timothy had drunk coffee, black and bitter, because that's what men did. Delores preferred herbal tea, chamomile and lavender, flavors that soothed rather than jolted.

Such a small thing, but it represented everything. The freedom to choose what she put in her body, how she moved through the world, who she loved. Freedoms that her parents' will now sought to revoke, as if eighteen years of authentic living could be erased by legal language.

The kettle whistled, and Delores poured the hot water over her tea bag, watching the golden color bloom in the clear water. Like her transition, she thought. The slow transformation from one thing to another, the gradual revelation of what had always been there, waiting.

She carried her mug to the window and looked out at the storm. Somewhere across town, Craig was probably celebrating his legal victory, already planning how to spend his increased inheritance. Somewhere else, Beau was sleeping in a military barracks in Iraq, unaware that his family was fracturing even further. And here she stood, the daughter who had never been acknowledged as such, holding a cup of tea and wondering if she had the strength to fight for her right to exist.

A memory surfaced, clearer than the others: the last real conversation she'd had with her mother, three years before the cancer took her. They had been sitting in this same spot, actually, when her mother had visited the apartment for the first and only time.

"I don't understand it," her mother had said, her voice careful and pained. "I don't understand how Timothy could just... disappear."

"Timothy never existed, Mom," Delores had replied gently. "I know that's hard to hear, but he was just a costume I wore because I thought it would make you happy. This is who I really am. This is who I've always been."

Her mother had cried then, quiet tears that spoke of grief for a son who had never been real and confusion about a daughter she couldn't bring herself to fully accept. "I loved Timothy," she had whispered.

"I know you did," Delores had said. "But you loved an idea, not a person. I'm a person, Mom. I'm your child, just not the one you expected."

They had parted that day with careful hugs and careful words, both of them knowing that something fundamental remained unresolved. Her mother had died still grieving for Timothy, still unable to fully embrace Delores. And now, through the will, that rejection had been made permanent, legal, inescapable.

Delores sipped her tea and felt the warmth spread through her chest. Outside, the storm was beginning to pass, the thunder moving off into the distance. But inside, the storm was just beginning. She would have to decide whether to accept the pittance her parents had left her—the crumbs thrown to someone they couldn't quite bring themselves to disown entirely—or fight for recognition of who she really was.

The thought of going to court, of having her identity dissected by lawyers and judges, made her stomach clench. But the thought of accepting their final judgment—that Timothy was real and Delores was not—made her feel like she was suffocating.

She finished her tea and walked to her bedroom, where she kept the journal, she had maintained since her transition. Page after page of her thoughts, her struggles, her victories. Proof of a life lived authentically, even when the world insisted, she was wrong.

Tonight, she would write about the will, about the choice she faced. But first, she would write about the memories that had sustained her—the moments when she had glimpsed her true self even in Timothy's prison. Because those memories were real, even if her parents had never acknowledged them. Those moments of truth were hers, and no legal document could take them away.

Delores picked up her pen and began to write:

Today I learned that my parents' love came with conditions I could never meet. But I also remembered that THE ONE's love doesn't. I am real. I am their daughter, whether they could see it or not. And I will not let their final rejection erase the truth of who I am.

The words felt like a prayer, a declaration, a battle cry. Tomorrow, she would have to decide how to fight. But tonight, she would remember who she was fighting for—not just herself, but every person who had ever been told their truth didn't matter.

Timothy had been a lie. But Delores was real, and she would not be erased.