“No.”
“And when was the last time you visited it yourself?”
The silence lasted so long that the judge looked away from her notes.
—I couldn’t —Tim finally said—. She didn’t look like my mother anymore.
For a brief moment, it was not a man in an expensive suit. He was a son who had run away from the wrong pain and hired someone else to carry him.
Margaret testified after him, petite in the witness chair but unwavering.
“Rosie told me, very clearly, that Jeremy was the boy who decided to stay. He knew perfectly well who he was.”
When it was my turn to testify, I didn’t try to hide behind a lie.
—I took the money —admitted—. I needed it for my mother’s medication. But he kept coming back. He couldn’t abandon her as if she were his own son.
The judge read Rosie’s letter without saying a word and then raised her head.
“The legacy remains.”
At the bank, I put the key in the safe. Inside were savings bonds, bundles of well-ordered bills and a photograph of a young woman with a baby in her arms.
My vision blurred.
I read his last sentence once again: “Use half for my friends. They don’t have anyone either”.
A week later, I sat in front of the director of the nursing home.
“Half goes to residents”, I said. “For excursions, better meals, whatever Margaret tells them they need”.
She nodded, smiling slightly.
That month, I paid my mother’s medical bills. For the first time in years, I slept without worrying about money.
Every Saturday I returned home by car. Margaret always kept a place for me near the window, in Rosie’s old chair.
One afternoon, I brought a small bouquet of tulips and placed them on the seat of that chair.
Margaret watched in silence, with the knitting needles still resting on her lap.
—She taught me to stay —said.
Margaret nodded slightly, and the sunlight slowly moved over the petals.
