I signed papers.
Florence’s relatives glared while I became the legal owner of the home they believed I didn’t deserve.
I had imagined walking outside victorious.
Instead I sat there holding a receipt for a winter coat and crying harder than I had at Florence’s funeral.
That was another truth I had to face.
At the funeral, I had barely cried.
I had been too busy bracing myself against the relatives, too busy wondering about the will, too busy calculating what came next.
Now, with nobody watching, I grieved my wife.
Not the homeowner.
Not the widow whose age had once seemed useful to me.
Florence.
The woman who put two plates on the table every night.
The woman who noticed my boots.
The woman who had watched me stare at her medicine and still decided I might become better than that moment.
When the lawyer returned, I had put everything carefully back inside the shoebox.
“Did she hate me?” I asked.
He considered the question.
“No.”
“Did she ever say she regretted marrying me?”
“No.”
That almost made it harder.
I looked toward the door.
“Her family does.”
“Her family saw part of the story.”
I nodded.
They had seen enough to be angry.
I couldn’t blame them.
I had been exactly what they called me when the marriage began.
Being understood by Florence did not erase that.
Being forgiven by her did not make me innocent.
I still had to carry what I had done.
Outside the office, Florence’s niece was waiting near the hallway.
Her expression hardened when she saw the shoebox in my hands.
“So she did leave you something.”
A week earlier, I might have defended myself.
I might have snapped that Florence had been my wife and that whatever she gave me was none of her niece’s business.
Instead I said, “Not what I came for.”
She looked suspiciously at the box.
I could have shown her the letters.
I didn’t.
They were Florence’s last conversation with me.
But I owed her niece one thing.
“You were right about me,” I said.
She blinked.
“At the funeral.
About why I married her.
You were right.”
Her anger seemed to lose its footing for a second.
I continued before I could talk myself out of it.
“I thought I would get the house.
I expected it.
Florence knew.
She knew much earlier than I realized.”
Her niece stared at me.
“Then why did she stay with you?”
I looked down at the shoebox.
