I did not need to prove purity by becoming poor.
My advisers helped me establish long-term security.
I kept the house.
I funded retirement accounts and reserves.
I planned for healthcare.
I traveled once with Margaret to a place Ethan had wanted to visit.
I bought a new mattress because I had spent eighteen months sleeping on
one chosen by two people.
That purchase made me cry in a furniture store.
Money could not restore my family.
But pretending money had no practical value would have been dishonest.
The difference was that I no longer treated it as a substitute for love.
The foundation received substantial support.
So did my future.
Both choices honored the people I lost.
Ethan would have been furious if I gave everything away and left myself
unsafe.
I could hear him:
Claire, philanthropy is not supposed to require eating canned beans at
seventy.
The memory made me laugh.
PART 27 — THE THIRD CHRISTMAS
The third Christmas after the crash was the first one I did not dread
from October onward.
I spent Christmas Eve with Margaret and Robert.
Christmas morning, I visited the cemetery.
That afternoon, Melissa came over.
Mom joined us later.
Dad did not.
