I took the envelope without arguing, understanding the arrangement had always been temporary.
Something in her tone still stung more than I expected, given everything the past several months had actually meant to me.
I stood there on the church steps for a long moment after she walked away, other mourners filing past me toward their cars.
I hadn’t expected grief this sharp for a man I’d technically met through a paid arrangement.
Nothing about our Sundays together had ever felt technical once we actually got started.
On her wrist was the gold watch he’d told me about, the one he’d bought his wife the year they married.
Now sitting casually on Renata’s arm like an ordinary accessory.
Something about that detail bothered me the entire drive home, though I couldn’t articulate exactly why at the time.
I kept glancing at the rearview mirror at red lights, half expecting to see Renata’s car following behind, though of course it never was.
I called my mom that night, unable to fully explain why I felt so unsettled.
I described the funeral in halting, incomplete sentences she listened to patiently.
“Some things you feel before you understand why,” she told me. “Trust that feeling. It’s usually right about something.”
I fell asleep that night still turning the conversation over in my mind, though no clearer answer arrived before I finally drifted off.
A week after the funeral, a lawyer called and asked me to come to his office regarding a matter connected to Mr. Ashworth’s estate.
The call caught me completely off guard, my hands trembling slightly as I wrote down the address and time he gave me.
I spent the days leading up to that appointment wondering what could possibly require my presence.
Running through a dozen unlikely explanations that all felt equally implausible.
Part of me worried Renata had found some reason to accuse me of something, though I couldn’t imagine what that might actually be.
When I arrived, several relatives were already there, seated in a small conference room that smelled faintly of old paper and coffee.
Renata sat in the front, arms crossed, her expression tightening the moment she saw me walk through the door.
The room felt tense immediately, conversations dying down, several relatives glancing curiously between Renata and me.
The lawyer, Mr. Castellan, opened a folder, looked directly at me, and said, “Before he passed, he left one final instruction about you.”
He put on his glasses, adjusting them carefully before continuing.
“I’ll read it exactly as he dictated it, because he was very specific.”
He cleared his throat once before beginning.
“‘To the young woman my daughter paid to pretend to be my granddaughter.
Yes, Renata, I knew. I knew by her second Sunday. I am blind, not deaf.'”
Renata’s arms came uncrossed slowly, her face draining of color as the words settled over the room.
A few relatives shifted uncomfortably in their seats, clearly hearing this detail for the very first time.
Mr. Castellan turned the page, his voice steady despite the obvious tension building around him.
“‘There is a footlocker in my closet, beneath my medals. Inside it are letters. Dozens of them.
Every one addressed to me, every one still sealed.'”
The room went completely silent.
