My neighbor on the north side, Paulette Greer, a retired schoolteacher who had known Gerald for twenty years, had noticed the unusual number of cars in my driveway. In the way of a person who has lived next to someone long enough to earn the right, she knocked on my door to ask if everything was all right.
I politely told her I was working through some late estate matters and that I deeply appreciated her checking in. I did not tell her a single word more than that. But Paulette’s house was highly visible from mine, she was home most days, and she paid sharp attention to things. Just knowing she was watching out for me was its own kind of comfort.
Hargrove called on Friday with major news. He told me that the Sheriff’s office had officially opened a review of Gerald’s death. It was not a full criminal investigation yet, but a formal review.
They would be officially requesting Gerald’s full medical records and would likely wish to speak directly with the cardiologist. “This is moving,” I told him, feeling a surge of vindication.
“It is,” Hargrove confirmed. “And Daryl is going to feel that movement very shortly, if he hasn’t already.”
After I hung up, I went out to the garden and planted the two flats of impatiens I had bought at the nursery three weeks ago. The dirt was cool and smelled of life, and the work was pleasingly straightforward. Dig, place, firm, water, repeat.
There are massive, terrifying things in this world that you cannot control, and there are small things that you can. I have always found it useful, when facing the former, to give your hands something to do with the latter.
They came back on a Wednesday, exactly twelve days after their first hostile visit. This time, they called ahead to ensure I was home. Carla called the day before, deploying that particular artificial warmth she used like a skeleton key.
She claimed she and Daryl had been doing a lot of soul-searching and that they felt terrible about how things had been left on the porch. She asked if I would be willing to have them come by just to talk things over coffee. “We miss you,” she purred, in a way that made the phrase sound heavily practiced in a bathroom mirror.
I said yes. I said yes because I wanted to see what their next desperate move would be. Because I had already updated Hargrove, and because Linda was now fully informed and only a phone call away, I knew I was not walking into the dark this time.
They arrived at ten on Wednesday morning, dressed far more carefully than a casual morning coffee required. Carla had brought a store-bought coffee cake, which she presented to me as though it were a sacred olive branch. Daryl actually shook my hand—something he had not done in thirty years—and told me I looked well.
We sat down at the kitchen table, and I poured the coffee. I deliberately did not put the coffee cake out on plates, because I did not want them to feel comfortable or welcomed. Daryl began the performance.
He said he knew that the last few months had been incredibly hard on me. He said he understood that profound grief did strange things to people’s minds, especially after a long time had passed. “Sometimes, you go looking for grand meaning where there isn’t any, because the idea that someone you loved simply died naturally feels unbearable,” he theorized.
He said all this using the gentle, patronizing voice of a man reading from a corporate script about compassion. Was he actually sitting in my house, suggesting that I was senile and had invented this entire conspiracy? I remained stone-faced and let him finish.
Then Carla smoothly took over. It was the more practiced of the two maneuvers: the soft, feminine approach immediately following his gaslighting reframe. She said they were deeply worried about my mental state.
She warned that this foolish business with the lawyer and the sheriff was going to be stressful, highly public, and terribly upsetting. She claimed I was going to be dragged through a humiliating ordeal for absolutely nothing, because there was nothing to find. “Gerald died of heart failure, Dorothy,” she insisted gently. “The doctors confirmed that years ago. Why would you want to put yourself through this?”
“Because Gerald asked me to,” I said flatly.
That stopped them dead in their tracks for a moment. Daryl leaned forward, the fake gentleness slipping to reveal the ugly mask underneath. “What did he ask you, exactly?”
I looked him dead in the eye. “What do you think he asked me, Daryl?”
He looked away, staring hard at the table before looking back up to try a different tactic. “We want to make you an offer,” he said. “On the East Parcel. Fair market value. Full appraised value.”
He spread his hands reasonably. “You’d never have to deal with any of this legal stress again. You could take the money, take a nice trip. Let Linda set you up with a smaller place closer to Cincinnati. Nobody has to be hurt.”
There it was. The real, desperate architecture of their visit was finally showing clearly through the plaster. I put my coffee cup down with a sharp clink.
“Let me make sure I understand you completely,” I said. “You’re offering to buy the property Gerald specifically left to me, but only in exchange for me officially stopping a legal review into the highly suspicious circumstances of his death.”
“That’s not—” Carla started, panicking.