James also sent a registered letter to the commission noting that the ticket in question was purchased under a customer account in my name and that any claim filed by another party should be subject to verification pending the outcome of the dispute. I did not tell Derek. I want to be honest about that decision.
I made it deliberately and I do not regret it. He had put my suitcase in the hydrangeas. He had told me to go to a home. He had taken something from me. Not just the ticket, but the version of him I had believed in for 44 years. And he had done it casually, the way a person throws away something they no longer consider valuable.
He had forfeited the courtesy of advanced notice. For 2 days after the filing, the house felt like a held breath. I went about my routines. I made meals I ate alone in the kitchen. I tended the garden in the cold. I slept in the bedroom that had been mine for 30 years, in the bed that still had Roland’s nightstand on one side with his reading lamp and the book he had been halfway through when he died.