That’s all your mother ever wanted.
Behind us, I heard Marcus and Victoria finally leaving, their voices low and strained.
I didn’t look back.
One month later, I sat in the office of a financial adviser in Hartford, someone Evelyn had recommended, a woman with 20 years of experience and no interest in getting rich off my inexperience.
Here’s my recommendation,
she said, sliding a document across the desk.
We keep the trust invested.
Draw only what you need for living expenses.
The life insurance goes into a high yield savings account for emergencies and opportunities.
We pay off your student loans immediately.
That’s about 42,000.
And you keep working.
Keep working?
I’d expected her to suggest I retire, travel, do something extravagant.
You love your job,
she said simply.
Money shouldn’t change who you are.
It should just give you options.
So that’s what I did.
I paid off my loans, a debt I’d been chipping away at for 6 years, gone in a single transaction.
I kept my position at Maplewood, though I switched to day shifts now that I didn’t need the night differential.
I stayed with Diane for another month while I figured out what to do about the house.
Because the house was complicated, it was where I’d cared for mom, where I’d been thrown out like garbage, where Marcus and Victoria had drunk wine while my belongings soaked in the rain.
It was also the place where mom had grown her lavender garden, where she’d tucked me in at night, where she’d quietly met with lawyers and built a future I never knew existed.
I wasn’t ready to live there.
Not yet.
But I wasn’t ready to sell it either.
Rent it,
Diane suggested one evening.
Let it pay for itself while you figure things out.
There’s no rush.
She was right.
For the first time in my life, there was no rush.
I had time now.
Mom had given me that.
3 months after the will reading, grandma called me with news.
Marcus had to sell the Greenwich House.
She said,
“Victoria filed for divorce last week.
I was at work on my break, sitting in the same stairwell where I’d learned our parents were dead.
Strange how places accumulate moments.
How do you know?”
His listing showed up on Zillow, and Victoria’s Instagram is very forthcoming.
Grandma’s tone was dry.
She’s already rebranding herself as a survivor of narcissistic financial abuse.
Direct quote.
I almost laughed.
Almost.
Is he okay?
Define okay.
Grandma sighed.
He’s living in an apartment in Bridgeport.
Still working in real estate, but not at his old firm.
I don’t think anyone’s inviting him to the Greenwich cocktail parties anymore.
The version of me from 3 months ago might have felt some satisfaction.
The new version, the one who’d had time to process, to grieve, to heal, just felt tired.
I don’t wish him harm,
I said.
I know you don’t.
That’s the difference between you and him.
Did mom know about the debts, the financial trouble?
she suspected.
That’s partly why she did what she did.
She knew if there was money available, Marcus would find a way to take it.
Not because he’s evil, but because he was raised to believe he was owed it.
I thought about my brother alone in a Bridgeport apartment, his wife gone, his lifestyle collapsed.
I thought about the boy who used to chase me around the backyard, who let me ride on his shoulders at parades.
I didn’t know where that boy had gone, but I knew I couldn’t save him.
I’m going to the house this weekend,
I told Grandma.
First time since everything.
Do you want company?
Yeah,
I think I do.
The lavender garden had survived the winter.