She revised it several times.”
“You knew?”
“Some of it.”
“Did she tell you why she stayed married to me?”
He nodded toward the box.
“She wanted to tell you herself.”
Under the letter were several objects I recognized.
The first was a receipt from the store where Florence had bought my winter coat.
I remembered that morning.
I had walked downstairs and found the coat hanging beside the front door.
It was dark blue, heavy, warmer than anything I had owned in years.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Florence glanced over from the kitchen.
“A coat.”
“I can see that.
Why did you buy it?”
She gave me the smallest smile.
“Because you are going to freeze wearing that thing you call a jacket.”
I had muttered thanks and put it on.
That was all.
At the time I had considered the coat one more benefit of the arrangement.
Standing in the lawyer’s office, I turned the receipt over.
Florence had written a date on the back and one sentence beneath it.
“The first winter he stopped shivering at my table.”
I put it down.
The next item was the receipt for the boots she had bought after noticing mine were worn through.
Another note was written on the back.
“He said he didn’t need them.
He wore them the next morning.”
I gave a short, broken laugh that embarrassed me more than crying would have.
“Why would she save these?”
The lawyer did not answer.
I kept digging.
There was a grocery receipt, folded into quarters.
At first I didn’t understand why it mattered.
Then I saw the date.
I remembered that evening.
Florence had been tired after an appointment.
I had gone to the store without her and returned with the tea she liked, the bread she always bought, and the ridiculous lemon cookies she pretended weren’t her favorite.
She had tried to reimburse me.
I told her it was fine.
She insisted.
I refused.
It had cost almost nothing.
To me, it hadn’t been a meaningful gesture.
Apparently it had been meaningful to Florence.
On the back she had written, “The first thing he bought for this house without asking what he would get back.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Something in the room seemed to tilt.
I had spent years measuring Florence by what I expected to inherit.
She had spent those same years measuring tiny changes in me that I hadn’t even noticed.
I unfolded the rest of the letter.
Florence wrote about our first months together.
She wrote that she knew I was watching the house.
She knew I paid more attention whenever she returned from the doctor.
She knew I sometimes stared at the prescription bottles on the counter.
