“Don’t be sad for me, there were many beautiful moments,” Winnie read, then put down the letter.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Well, she signed her initials.” Winnie held up the letter. “I love that she told us how to feel, that’s handy,” she added.
“So this Simon guy has her will?” I asked, and Nathan nodded. “And you haven’t seen it?” Nathan shook his head no, and my stress level ticked up a notch.
“So . . . do we have to call him?” Winnie asked, looking at Nathan.
“I already emailed,” Nathan said, “while you were driving down. He can do the reading right after the funeral if we want.”
“That’s an action-packed morning,” my sister joked. But I wasn’t in a joking mood.
“Is it strange that she hired someone to read her will?” I asked. “I mean, is that even necessary?”
“She probably thought a neutral third party was best,” Nathan replied. “To, y’know, avoid any misunderstandings.”
“How perfectly detached of her,” Winnie said.
“What kind of misunderstandings?” I pressed.
“Leave poor Nathan alone,” my sister chided. “We’re grateful to you for being here,” she told him. “I’m sure she took care of you in her will, but if she didn’t, we will.”
She looked at me for confirmation.
“Yes, of course.”
“Thank you for saying that,” he said, then forced a smile.
I had an uneasy feeling. There was something my cousin wasn’t telling us. And knowing my mother, whatever it was, it was going to be a bitch.
CHAPTER 25
* * *
WINNIE
“Where did she die?” I asked Nathan as we （finally!） switched from tea in the dining room to whiskey in the parlor. I had always hated this room, with its high-back sofas and heavy velvet drapes, but it was cozier than the dining room, and the whiskey made it bearable.
“The library,” Nathan said. “Silvia said she passed peacefully in her favorite chair.” I was grateful that it wasn’t me who had found her. We did the dead-body thing with my dad—a second round of it might have put me over the edge.
You would think after our dad died, Mom would have started acting like an actual parent, but she went the other way. Instead of being more present, she all but disappeared. I was a senior in high school, wrestling with college apps, AP Calculus, and crippling grief. Charlie was at UC Santa Cruz, trying to navigate a full course load and the possessive girlfriend who went on to become his possessive wife. Dad had been a wonderful, caring father—he’d helped us with our homework, taught us how to drive, picked us up from parties when we couldn’t drive ourselves. But unfortunately his most impactful legacy was the behavior he’d modeled for Charlie: how to capitulate to a controlling woman. Because it was clear that Charlie had fallen headlong into the exact same trap.
“I saw her two nights ago,” Nathan said. “She made me dinner. Fish—”
“With the head still on,” I guessed, and he smiled beneath shiny eyes.
“She fell asleep while I was doing the dishes. Right there where you’re sitting.”
“That’s quite a feat,” I said. This couch was the pinnacle of uncomfortable; you’d have to really be wiped. Or—as it turns out—deathly ill.
“She’s never fallen asleep like that before,” Nathan said. “It wasn’t like her.” And I knew he felt he’d missed something, a clue that death was knocking on her door. And maybe he had. In a way, we all knew this was coming. Mom was on borrowed time, staying alive by a dedicated caregiver, modern technology, and sheer will.
When Mom got too sick to take care of herself, I tried to be her nursemaid. I hadn’t figured out how to put that Stanford degree to good use yet, so welcomed a reason to delay becoming a self-sufficient adult. Charlie had a wife and kid—I didn’t even have a houseplant, so dropping everything to be with her essentially meant dropping nothing. So I moved back home. I thought it would be good for our relationship, a way for Mom and me to finally bond, but it turned out to be an exercise in self-flagellation. Because taking Mom to her appointments, picking up her meds, holding her hand on her dark days wasn’t enough for her. She wanted more from me—something I couldn’t give, even if I’d wanted to. And once she asked for it, she couldn’t take it back. Things got uncomfortable. Her request permeated the air like poison gas. I couldn’t tell her I wanted to step up but that I had a disease, too, because that would have required admitting it, which I wasn’t ready to do. So I went back to Northern California to look for a job and a life. I figured if I couldn’t help her, I should at least try to help myself.