“Leaving things unfinished.”
I took his hand.
“You haven’t left anything unfinished.”
He looked at me.
“You don’t know that.”
I squeezed his fingers.
“I know you.”
He smiled.
“I hope you do.”
It was the last serious conversation we ever had.
Two weeks later, Richard died peacefully in his sleep.
And for the second time in my life, I sat beside the bed of a man I loved and watched the person I depended on disappear.
I thought I knew what came next.
I was wrong.
The lawyer arrived the following morning.
He told me Richard had left nothing to me.
Then he showed me the photograph.
The little girl.
The shelter.
The words on the back.
She deserved a home.
I stared at it.
“Why?”
The lawyer opened Richard’s letter.
“Because Richard knew you would ask that.”
My hands shook.
He began to read.
Richard had been helping the children’s shelter for decades.
He had helped renovate it.
He had paid for food.
He had funded scholarships.
He had quietly helped children who had nowhere else to go.
And one day, when he was still a young man, he had visited the shelter.
There had been a little girl sitting alone.
Interesting