A week after the funeral, I went to see Hollis Grant.
His office is on the second floor above a jewelry store on Main Street. It smells like old paper and peppermint. He’d been Walt’s lawyer for thirty-one years.
He walked me through the trust. Page by page. The money was mine for life. I could spend it, give it, leave it. Whatever I wanted.
“Dolores,” he said, when we were done. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Walt asked me to give you a message. If you ever came in here alone.”
“What message?”
Hollis opened his desk drawer. He took out a small folded note and handed it to me. It was Walt’s handwriting. Shakier than it used to be. He must have written it near the end.
“Dee. Before you tell them, find out. You’ll never get another chance to see them straight. Love, W.”
I sat in that leather chair and read it four times.
“He was worried about them,” Hollis said quietly. “Michael and Stephanie mostly. He said they’d gotten used to a certain kind of life. He wasn’t sure what they’d do if they knew there was money.”
“And Danny?”
Hollis almost smiled.
“He said Danny would be fine either way. He said Danny was the only one of the three who’d never once asked him for anything.”
I drove home in the Buick with that note on the passenger seat.
That night, I sat at my kitchen table with Walt’s reading glasses in front of me. The house was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator ticking.
And I decided something I’m still not sure was right.
I was going to call my children. And I was going to tell them I’d lost everything.
I told myself it was what Walt wanted. That’s true. But it was also something else.
I’d just lost the man I’d loved for fifty years. And I needed to know who I had left.
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