In August 2021, a mysterious package from Sarasota, Florida, showed up in Nicole Archer’s mailbox in New York City.
Archer hurried upstairs to her cramped Chelsea apartment with the thick envelope in hand and tore it open at her dining table, revealing a legal document that she had been wondering about for months.
She knew that a beloved college professor had bequeathed her something in her will. She was expecting a modest gift — enough money for a fancy dinner, perhaps, or one of the beaded bracelets the professor liked to make by hand…