CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2: Ten Years Too Late
Elise leaned over the wheelchair, her cream sweater soft against the warm lamp light, her face hard with anger.
“Whoever keeps him gets the inheritance,” she said. “That’s why you’re here.”
Mark laughed bitterly. “At least I’m honest about it.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
That sentence landed harder than any insult.
At least I’m honest about it.
Mark had not visited for Christmas in six years. He had sent expensive fruit baskets and short messages through his assistant. When Arthur fell in the kitchen last winter, Mark wired money for a home nurse and called it responsibility.
Elise had come more often.
But never quietly.
Every visit came with a reminder.
I’m the one doing this.
I’m the one who shows up.
I’m the one who deserves something when all this is over.
Arthur used to excuse it.
Grief had changed her, he told himself.
Divorce had made her sharp.
Money stress had made her tired.
But lately, every act of kindness seemed to arrive with a receipt.
She bought groceries, then photographed them.
She drove him to appointments, then mentioned the gas money.
She sat beside him during physical therapy, then asked whether the lake house was still in the trust.
Mark stepped around the wheelchair and grabbed the inheritance folder from the table.
“Dad already told me he wanted the house to stay with the Whitman name,” he said.
Elise scoffed. “You mean your name.”
“It’s called legacy.”
“No,” she said. “It’s called greed in a nice shirt.”
Arthur opened his eyes.
On the wall above the sofa hung a portrait of his late wife, Margaret.
She was smiling in the photo, standing in the garden with dirt on her gloves and sunlight in her hair.
Arthur looked at her until the room blurred.
Margaret would have hated this.
May you like
No, worse.
She would have seen it coming.
