I could breathe.
That was what frightened me most.
Even though I had not known about the inheritance, I could already imagine what it would feel like to have it.
And once I admitted that to myself, I understood why Nora might never believe me.
The Money I Could Not Keep
That evening, I sat at my kitchen table and opened my laptop.
I entered the inheritance amount into a student-loan calculator.
The result appeared almost instantly.
Zero.
I stared at the screen.
For years, I had imagined what it would feel like to see that number disappear. I had pictured calling my parents, taking them to dinner, and telling them they no longer needed to worry about whether I could afford to help them.
Now the possibility sat in front of me, attached to the name of a young woman who had died two days earlier.
I closed the calculator.
