“Eight months.”
She nodded slowly. She took a sip of her coffee. She kept her eyes on the road.
“Good girl,” she said.
We drove the rest of the way mostly in silence, which was the right thing. Some information needs time to settle before anyone talks about it further.
Pat understood this. It was one of the things that had made her a good colleague and a better friend.
She came inside when we got to my house.
Staple investigated her shoes thoroughly and then sat on her feet, which was his way of indicating provisional acceptance.
Pat looked down at him.
“This cat has never once done this with me.”
“He does it with everyone eventually,” I said. “He just makes you wait.”
She laughed, which was also the right thing.
I made more coffee, real coffee this time, in the small Italian press my grandmother had left me along with the decorative spoons.
I brought it to the living room table and we sat.
The afternoon light was coming through the west-facing kitchen window, the way it always did at that hour, turning the far wall a particular shade of amber that I had never found a satisfactory name for.
Staple abandoned Pat’s feet and went to sit in the patch of warmth on the floor.
“You know what you did is unusual,” Pat said.
It was not a question.
“I know.”
“Liening your own property.”
“It’s legal,” I said.
“I know it’s legal. I’ve been doing this for twenty-two years.” She wrapped both hands around her mug. “I’m saying it’s unusual. Most people don’t think that far ahead.”
“Most people don’t have the same information I have.”
She looked at me for a moment.
“You really thought she’d try.”
I did not answer immediately.
Outside, a car went slowly down the street. Somewhere nearby, a lawnmower ran. The regular sounds of a regular afternoon.
“I thought it was possible,” I said finally. “I hoped I was wrong.”
Pat set her mug down.
“My brother,” she said, “sold a piece of land that belonged to our grandmother. He did it while she was in a rehabilitation facility after her hip replacement. He had the power of attorney she had signed when she was seventy-three because she trusted him and didn’t read the scope carefully. He moved fast. By the time she was well enough to ask questions, the land was sold and the money was already in an account she couldn’t access.”
Pat looked at her hands.
“I cut him off completely after that. No calls, no holidays, nothing. I don’t regret it.”
I waited because I could tell she was not finished.
“Some days I wonder whether I gave up too fast,” she said, “whether I missed some version of things where he understood what he had done and changed. Then I remember that he has called me exactly four times in the past six years, and every single call was about money he needed. And the wondering stops.”
The lawnmower two houses over shut off. The room was quiet.
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