Margaret looked down at her hands.
I immediately felt guilty.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
She reached toward me.
Her fingers were cold and crooked.
I took them.
“You should have said it earlier.”
“What?”
“That this is costing you.”
I stared.
She squeezed my hand weakly.
“Love that costs nothing is easy.”
“You are allowed to feel the cost.”
That sentence stayed with me.
The next morning, Margaret made Ethan call his siblings.
Not me.
Her.
She demanded they create a schedule.
For about two months, they tried.
Then work interfered.
Vacations.
Children.
Life.
Eventually the burden shifted back.
But something between Margaret and me had changed.
I no longer pretended caregiving did not hurt.
She no longer pretended receiving care did not hurt her.
We became honest.
That honesty was probably the beginning of love.
The farm had been sold years earlier.
At least, most of it.
Everyone knew that.
Samuel had accumulated debt before his death.
Margaret eventually sold the house, machinery, and fields.
By the time she came to live with us, everyone believed she had almost nothing except a small checking account and Social Security.
She contributed a little toward groceries.
I handled the rest.
Ethan and I never asked his siblings for money.
Maybe we should have.
Pride exists on every side.
Margaret occasionally mentioned land from her childhood.
A strip near the old western road.
Something her grandfather had bought.
I assumed it had been sold decades earlier.
She never explained.
Then, in the final two years of her life, she began asking strange questions.
“Do you trust Gideon Hale?”
I looked at her.
“Who?”
“My attorney.”
“You have an attorney?”
“I’m old, not dead.”
Margaret was ninety-one.
“You haven’t mentioned an attorney once in twelve years.”
“You never asked.”
“What do you need a lawyer for?”
“Old business.”
“What old business?”
She smiled.
“If it becomes your business, you’ll know.”
That was Margaret.
She could make secrecy sound like a weather forecast.
I did not push.
I assumed she had an old will.
Maybe instructions about funeral arrangements.
Nothing more.
Her final winter was brutal.
A respiratory infection weakened her.
Then came fluid around her lungs.
Hospital.
Home.
Hospital again.
Eventually she said she was done.
“I want my room.”
The doctor explained comfort care.
Ethan cried in the parking lot.
Margaret did not.
She simply wanted her own bed.
Her own blanket.
Her own window overlooking the two maple trees Owen had planted as a child.
The other siblings were notified.
Daniel said he would come Friday.
Marcus planned Saturday.
Leah said she needed to rearrange appointments.
