I refused.
I told him his kids would think he had been waiting for him to die.
He had even asked him to leave the family home to them.
I never knew that I had told his lawyer that conversation.
Then I got to
the last paragraph.
“My children will inherit my businesses, my investments and the house in which they grew up. You never tried to take those things away from them.”
Rebecca’s smile disappeared.
I looked at the brass key.
Finally, the lawyer spoke.
“Richard bought something six months before he got sick.”
He placed a document in front of me.
It was the writing of a small house by the lake.
I recognized the address immediately.
Richard and I had spent there one weekend once.
I had been standing on the porch and I had jokingly said:
“If I could choose any place to get older, I would choose a place exactly like this.”
He remembered it.
The house was mine.
Completely paid.
Then the lawyer turned another page.
There was also a trust, not the enormous fortune that ever
again have to fear losing my home or choosing between paying rent or buying food.
Rebecca stared at me.
“So you get money anyway?”
The lawyer looked at her.
“His father’s words were very clear.”
He then read out the last sentence of Richard’s letter.
“He came into my life looking for safety. He gave me something the money had never been able to buy. Make sure that you will never be afraid again.”
That’s when I started crying.
Not because I had inherited something.
But because Richard knew the most unpleasant truth about how our relationship had begun…
and yet I thought the way it ended mattered more.
Three months later, I moved into the little house by the lake.
I kept the wooden box over the comfortable of my bedroom.
The brass key is still inside, although I don’t need it anymore.
And every time I remember Richard
saying that I would get exactly what he deserved, I finally understand what he meant.
