After we hung up, I sat there for a long moment, the weight of the envelope solid in my lap, like a physical representation of something much bigger: trust, legacy, and the promise I’d silently made at my mother’s funeral, standing barefoot in the sand outside the beach house with the ocean pounding its grief into the shore.
I opened my laptop, pulled up a flight booking page, and typed in my destination: coastal Massachusetts.
My fingers moved over the keys with surprising steadiness. Morning flight. One checked bag. Return flight left open-ended.
Confirm.
It was time to go home.
But first, there were calls to make.
An hour later, I sat at my kitchen table, a mug of lukewarm tea forgotten at my elbow, while I scribbled notes on a legal pad as I spoke with Margaret.“We have everything we need,” she said, her voice calm and crisp on the line. I could picture her—steel-gray bob, wire-rim glasses, the kind of woman whose very presence made people sit up straighter. She’d been my mom’s lawyer, but also her friend; I remembered her bringing fresh-baked banana bread to the hospital, slipping me twenty-dollar bills for snacks when she thought Mom wasn’t looking.