“The gardens are significantly overgrown,” the agent said, peering through the window at beds Peggy had tended for decades. “We’ll bring in a landscaping crew to clean all that up.”
Overgrown.
Peggy’s roses, her perennials, her herbs—her one authentic creation in forty years—dismissed as an obstacle.
At night, fear crawled in.
Peggy lay awake in the master bedroom—Steven allowed her to stay there because “the furniture needs to remain for staging”—and her mind spiraled.
She was sixty-eight. No job. No recent work history. No family. What could she do? The Milbrook property was probably worthless. Fifty thousand, maybe. Enough for a few years if she lived like a monk. And then what? Government assistance? A shelter? A cheap facility where she’d be stacked in a room like forgotten luggage?
Some nights, panic tightened her chest so hard she couldn’t breathe. She’d pace in the dark, pressing a hand to her sternum, whispering “calm down” as if speaking to herself the way she once spoke to nervous stepchildren.
Other nights, fear transformed into rage.
How dare Richard do this? How dare he let her spend forty years believing she was secure, only to reveal in death that she was disposable?