Buy peaches if they look sweet.
I kept expecting to hear her humming.
I kept expecting her to call from the kitchen.
Daniel, would you mind opening this jar?
Daniel, come see the roses.
Daniel, you are tracking sawdust through my hallway again.
At the funeral, her relatives stared at me like I was filth.
“Gold digger,” someone whispered.
“He finally got exactly what he wanted,” another said.
Caroline did not speak to me at all.
She stood in the front row wearing black, jaw tight, her children beside her. When the pastor spoke about Evelyn’s generosity, Caroline cried silently.
I stood in the back.
I had no right to the front.
Maybe legally I did.
But morally?
No.
At the cemetery, rain began falling lightly. Everyone opened umbrellas. I did not have one. Evelyn would have scolded me for that.
You will catch your death standing in the rain like a fool.
After the burial, people gathered at the house.
Evelyn’s house.
Not mine.
Never mine.
I understood that by then.
I watched relatives move through the rooms, touching furniture, whispering, judging. Caroline stood by the mantel staring at Harold’s photograph.
I wanted to tell her I was sorry.
I wanted to tell her she had been right about me in the beginning, but wrong about what Evelyn had done to me.
