My life.
The attorney, Thomas Crane, stood across from me holding a cream-colored envelope sealed with dark blue wax.
He had attended Richard’s funeral the previous afternoon but had barely spoken to me.
I remembered him standing beneath the bare branches of an old elm tree, his silver hair moving in the cold November wind while the priest spoke about devotion, generosity, and the quiet dignity of a long life.
Emily had clung to my hand beside the grave.
She was six when Richard and I married.
She was eleven when we buried him.
And as the coffin disappeared into the ground, my daughter had whispered the word she had eventually come to use for him.
“Grandpa.”
Richard had never asked her to call him that.
Maybe that was why it hurt so much.
Now Thomas looked toward the staircase as though making certain Emily was not listening.
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs.”
