“Of course, of course.” She adjusted her plate. “I just mean — after living here rent-free for so long, it might be nice to have something that’s entirely yours.”
Rent-free.
I looked at her. I thought about all the ways I could answer that. Carol had watched from two hours away as her sister’s care needs multiplied and her younger daughter organized it, paid for it, showed up for it. And what she had absorbed, from that distance, was that Claire had gotten a good deal.
“I didn’t live here rent-free,” I said.
Carol looked confused in a polite way. “Well, you know what I mean. You didn’t have rent expenses. That’s not nothing.”
I could have explained it then. I should have. But I was two days past my mother’s death and I was standing in her house surrounded by people eating off her good plates, and the explanation felt like an accusation, and I was too tired to figure out who I was accusing.
“Right,” I said. And I moved toward the food table.
That moment came back to me when I read Daniel’s letter. Not because Carol and Daniel had collaborated, or at least I had no reason to think so. But because they had both arrived at the same story.
The story went like this: Ruth Bennett owned a house. Her daughter Claire lived in that house for twelve years, during which time she did not pay rent. This arrangement saved Claire a significant amount of money — money that, depending on how you told the story, belonged to the estate, or to Daniel as the other heir, or simply represented an unfair advantage.