I stood on the porch listening to the lock click and looked at the yellow lamp in her bedroom window. It was at that moment that I understood my mother was not taking care of Pearl, but was controlling her.
Three months passed and every Sunday I mailed her a card about small things in my life. My mother called me only once during that time to tell me Pearl was changing her estate and that I should focus on my little job.
I tried to find lawyers, but the advance alone cost three months of rent and I had no proof of any wrongdoing. Until one night in November, I received a message from an unknown number saying my grandmother was in palliative care.
I went immediately to the facility in Beaufort, but the receptionist told me I was not on the authorized visitor list. My mother had made a list to decide who could say goodbye to her own mother, and I was intentionally left off.
Two weeks later, Miranda called me at seven in the morning to say Pearl had died and that the funeral was on Thursday. At the service, a nurse from the parking lot approached me and whispered that my grandmother talked about me every day.