He’d planted it the spring before his first diagnosis because he wanted me to have “something outside the kitchen that knows how to come back after winter.”
Harold wasn’t a man for complicated speeches.
If he’d been sitting beside me that night, he probably would have tapped the folder and said, “Well, Eleanor. You know what to do.”
I did.
For the next two days, I behaved normally.
I bought groceries.
Watered my plants.
Walked the neighborhood.
I even stopped at Starbucks one afternoon and had a latte by myself while Victoria probably imagined I was accepting defeat.
I called Patricia.
“Everything is ready,” she said.
Then I called my friend Marisol.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to let Victoria think she won.”
“For how long?”
“Until breakfast.”
Marisol laughed.
“Harold would approve.”
On the third morning, I came downstairs at seven.
Victoria was already at the table with her laptop and coffee.
She looked past me toward the staircase.
No suitcase.
No boxes.
No panic.
Her expression shifted.
“You haven’t started packing.”
I poured coffee into my own mug and sat across from her.
“No.”
“Eleanor, the notice expires today.”
“I know.”
She closed her laptop.
“If you need help finding somewhere, Daniel and I can—”
“I have something for you.”
I went upstairs.
I took Patricia’s folder from the fireproof box.
Then I came back to the kitchen and set it directly in front of my daughter-in-law.
Her eyes dropped to the attorney’s letter clipped to the front.
For the first time since she’d handed me that envelope, Victoria stopped smiling.
Full story continuation
“What is this?” she asked.
“Something you should read carefully.”
Victoria looked at the letterhead.
“Patricia Garfield.”
“My attorney.”
“I know who she is.”
That interested me.
Apparently, Victoria had been paying more attention to my affairs than she’d admitted.
She opened the folder.
The first page was a letter from Patricia explaining, in language even simpler than the residency agreement, that Victoria’s so-called eviction notice had no legal authority to remove me from property controlled by my own trust.
The second document was a copy of the deed.
Then came the trust provisions.
Then the agreement Victoria and Daniel had both signed before moving in.
She read faster as she went.
Her cheeks started turning pink.
“You had this prepared?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve been planning against us?”
“No, Victoria. I protected myself after you sent strangers into my backyard and moved my dead husband’s belongings without asking me.”
She flipped another page.
Then she stopped.
Patricia had also prepared formal notice terminating their residency under the terms of the agreement.
They had thirty days to leave.
Victoria stared at the date.
“This is ridiculous.”
“No. Your three-day notice was ridiculous. This was prepared by an attorney.”