"Mister Jackson?"
Daniel pushed to his feet as a young blonde woman entered the lobby. "Yes."
"I'm Alana. Please, come on back."
Clutching the file folder uncomfortably, Daniel followed the young attorney to a small office surrounded by bookshelves and diplomas. He slumped into a chair in front of the desk as she stepped around it. "Uh…. The receptionist said your office kept Sam's will on file."
"I've got it right here," Alana offered, opening the file on her desk and laying her fingers gently on the paper inside. "Do you have her death certificate?"
He pulled the single paper out of his own file and handed it over. "Uh, they gave me, uh…. They told me to use this."
The attorney glanced over the DoD Report of Casualty and nodded. "This will work. I'm sorry for your loss."
Daniel couldn't answer that; he just stared at the front of the desk and tried to keep it together.
"Have you seen a copy of her will, Mister Jackson? Do you know what her wishes were?"
"Call me Daniel, please," he managed. Then, "Kind of. I mean, I haven't seen it, but we, uh…. We talked about it. She mentioned it. No," he admitted finally. "I'm not sure I have any idea what that says."
"She's named you to execute her estate."
"Yeah, I knew that."
"Okay. That means you'd be responsible for finalizing her affairs. Her funeral, the sale and division of her assets, taxes, et cetera. If that's something you're willing to take on."
Her taxes. God, it all sounded so cold. With a shrug that belied how incredibly painful it all was, he said, "It's kind of a last request, so, uh…. I don't think I can say no to that."
Glancing down at the will, the lawyer told him, "She requested to be buried in Bath National Cemetery."
"Uh, yeah, that makes sense," he said, though he had nothing of her to bury. "Her father's there. Both her parents, actually. And her grandfather."
She gave him a gentle smile. "A military family."
"Yeah." And Sam was the end of that line. He swallowed hard.
"Has a Casualty Assistance Officer reached out to you yet?"
"Yeah. They've started the process, I think, but I'm not really sure where they are with that."
"They'll keep you updated, I promise. They're very good about that," Alana assured him.
She seemed so certain. "Do you do a lot of these? Military?" Daniel asked.
"There's a lot of military here," she answered with a small shrug. "I'm more familiar with the process than I'd like to be, I'm afraid. Now, Sam split her assets a few ways. First, she enumerated a group of people who might want some sentimental items. Each person can take up to three items of their choosing -"
"Three," Daniel echoed blankly, because it was completely random. An entire life summed up in three things.
With an apologetic smile, Alana told him, "I'm sure the attorney she was working with encouraged her to put a number on it. We like numbers. Specificity. She named you, Mark Carter, Cassandra Fraiser, Jonathan O'Neill, and Murray Henderson."
It wasn't that funny, but he choked out a laugh. He hadn't even known Teal'c's pseudonym had a last name. For all he knew, Sam had just made it up. At the attorney's questioning look, he said, "It's nothing. It's fine. Never mind." Murray Henderson. He was going to cling tightly to that; it was the only humor he'd had in a week.
"O…kay. Next, the will specifies that Miss Fraiser can take any of the furnishings or personal belongings in Sam's house, including her car. The rest is to be auctioned and the estate split equally between Miss Fraiser and Mark Carter."
He took that in, nodded, and told her, "It's very pragmatic. That's very Sam."
"What makes you say that?"
"Cassie's in college," he explained. "She's just starting out. She could use the furniture. And the money. And the car; she drives an awful car. And Mark has two young children. The rest of us…. We don't need her money. I don't think any of us would want it."
"Deaths and inheritances can do funny things to people," she warned.
Inheritances, no. Deaths, yes. Jack hadn't answered Daniel's calls in three days.
"I have several papers for you to sign to start the process. A retention agreement for the firm, standard disclaimers, the petition to the court…."
He wasn't listening.
Three things.
Three things to sum up eight years of friendship. Of laughter. Of tears. Of family.
"Is there a time limit on this?" he asked, realizing belatedly that he'd cut the other woman off mid-sentence.
"I'm sorry?" she asked.
"Her estate. Dividing it all up; does that have to be done in… a week? A month? Is there a time limit?" Tears pricked at his eyes again. "I can do it. I will. I just… can't do it… yet."
The smile she offered was sympathetic. "Actually, legally, you can't do it yet, either. I'll need to file the will for the court's approval, including appointing you as executor. I'll be sending a letter to the beneficiaries to notify them. They can contest your appointment if they so choose."
"I doubt they would. How long will all that take?"
"Once I get the consent letters, the courts will take a week or so. Take your time, get through the funeral," she advised. "I'll let you know when we can start taking the next steps."
The next steps. When Sam was really gone, her empty casket buried, and she could be reduced to the way the legal system saw her: money. It made his stomach churn and his throat tight.
"One last thing. This was filed with her will. It's for you." Alana held up a white envelope. "Call me if you need anything."
All he needed was Sam.
~/~
"We go to Charlene Davis in Hawaii for more. Charlene."
The woman who appeared on the small television screen wore a heavy blue dress that was far too stuffy for the palm trees behind her. "Thanks, Dan. I'm here at Hickam Air Force base, where Air Force One is expected to land within the hour. Tomorrow, President Hayes will attend a memorial service for the fifty-eight airman lost last Tuesday when their transport plane crashed into the Pacific. As we reported last week, the Lockheed Martin C-5 Galaxy was carrying troops and research supplies from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage when it lost communication and then dropped off radar just two hours into the flight. The cause of the crash has yet to be determined. This crash is the largest single loss of life in US military aviation since a chartered flight killed 248 members of the 101st Airborne off the coast of Newfoundland in 1985."
"Charlene, is there any update on the search for wreckage?" the studio anchor asked.
"Uh, no, Dan, there isn't," she reported. "Search teams have been canvassing for the last few days, but officials are saying the potential search zone is more than double the size of Alaska. They've been very clear, though, that this is just a search and retrieval operation at this point, not a rescue. Unfortunately, Dan, with the water temperature in the forties, they don't believe there will be any survivors."
Al Reynolds frowned into his lunch, wondering who'd tuned the mess television to such garbage. Of course they wouldn't find any survivors. They wouldn't find any plane, because it didn't exist.
"Such a tragedy, Charlene," the man in the studio agreed. "And not just in the US. It's been a hard week for military around the world."
"It really has, Dan. Russia is observing a national day of mourning today after a fire in a military research facility outside Novgorod killed a hundred and eleven service members and twenty-three civilians on Thursday. And Britain's Royal Air Force is searching for an officer who's been reported missing on vacation in Polynesia."
Lies. All lies. Reynolds huffed. And there were more – and handful of Canadians and Aussies along with American civilians – that hadn't been reported yet. They could hardly declare two hundred and nine military men and contractors dead in a day.
The door to the mess swung open, and he looked up as Sergeant Siler stepped in. The technician made it only two steps toward the buffet before his eyes caught the television screen. His entire face fell.
Enough. No one at the SGC needed to be reminded of what they'd lost. Pushing to his feet, Reynolds strode toward the television and pulled the plug.