“Don’t fight them,” he whispered. “Just trust me.”
I told him I did not care about the house.
“I know,” he said. “That’s why.”
I thought there would be time to ask what he meant. There was not.
The day before he died, he asked for the blue blanket from home. I brought it folded over my arm and found Marlene arranging flowers near the sink, throwing away lilies before they had opened.
For one second, she looked less cruel than simply exhausted. Then she saw me, and the hardness returned. Russell slept through most of that afternoon. I sat beside him, counting breaths instead of tips, wishing for any bargain that could buy us one more month. When he woke, he only touched my wrist, as if reminding himself that I was real.
At the funeral, his three children stood across from me in matching black coats, like a wall. People offered condolences, then drifted toward them. I stood alone beside the casket and cried because I had loved him, and because nobody there believed that I had.
After the final guest left, the lawyer touched my elbow.
“Elena,” he said, “Russell left instructions.”
They had to be delivered face-to-face, with his children present.
“Tomorrow morning,” he said. “My office, nine.”
Then his voice softened.
“He asked me to repeat his last instruction. Trust him.”
The cold of the funeral still clung to my skin when I sat in the lawyer’s office the next morning.
