He also included a timeline of my attempts to maintain contact with Victoria and her documented responses or lack thereof.
The attorney dropped the case within 2 weeks.
Spring came.
I turned 73 in March. Barbara threw me a small party.
Some of the women from my church came. My doctor came. We’d become friendly over the years.
We had cake and wine and laughter.
No one mentioned Victoria. They all knew. Small town, and news travels.
I didn’t miss Victoria. I missed who I’d thought she was.
I missed the daughter I’d raised, the little girl who’d crawled into my lap and fallen asleep during thunderstorms.
But that girl was gone, if she’d ever really existed.
The scholarship fund was established in April. The Robert Holloway Memorial Scholarship for students who’d lost a parent.
The first recipients were announced in May. Three students, including a 17-year-old girl from Cleveland who’d lost her mother to cancer. She wanted to be a nurse.
I met her at the awards ceremony Richard had organized.
She hugged me, really hugged me, not the obligatory side hug Victoria had been giving me for years, and told me I was an angel.
I wasn’t an angel.
I was just a woman who decided her life’s work should help people who’d appreciate it.
I still live in my house. Barbara and I take walks together every morning when the weather’s nice. I’ve joined a book club at the library.
I volunteer at the hospital twice a week, sitting with patients who don’t have family nearby. I’m taking a watercolor painting class.
I’ve made friends, real friends, who call to check on me, who invite me to dinner, who remember my birthday.
Sometimes I wonder if Victoria thinks about me, if she regrets anything, if she ever tells Emma and Jacob about their grandmother who loved them.
But mostly I don’t think about her at all.
I think about the students who will go to college because of Robert’s memory. I think about the elderly people who will get medical care they couldn’t otherwise afford.
I think about the life I’m living now. Quieter, yes, but fuller in ways that matter.
And I sleep well at night knowing I finally chose myself.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.