I laughed.
“They mostly know I’m never home.”
A shadow crossed her face.
“It’ll be worth it one day,” she said quietly.
Sometimes after our errands, she invited me inside for coffee.
I always perched nervously on the edge of expensive chairs.
“You can sit back,” she teased one afternoon. “The furniture won’t attack you.”
“Old habits.”
She chuckled.
Soon she told me stories about Arthur, about the loneliness of a giant house, and about her four adult children.
The way she talked about them always felt different.
One afternoon, stirring tea absentmindedly, she sighed.
“Bradley wants another meeting with the estate lawyer.”
“That sounds important.”
“It sounds like vultures circling,” she muttered.
Then she added quickly, “But you didn’t hear me say that.”
I pretended I hadn’t.
But I had.
And I felt sorry for her.
She had wealth, comfort, and everything money could buy.
Yet the people closest to her seemed interested only in what she might leave behind.
Then something happened that changed everything.
One afternoon she accidentally left her wallet in my back seat.
I found it after dropping her off.
Without opening it, I carried it back into the house.
