She wrote it down.
I have thought about that note many times in the months since she died. She sat at the kitchen table and she got the legal pad and she wrote two paragraphs, carefully, in her clear handwriting that had gotten a little uneven by that year but was still clearly hers.
She wrote: the roof was expensive and Claire paid for it herself, and it should be paid back when the house is sold.
Not because she thought I would demand it. Because she wanted me to be able to say she’d said so, if it ever came to that.
It came to that.
DANIEL’S VERSION OF THE STORY
I have been thinking about Daniel’s version of the story, because understanding it is different from accepting it, and understanding it is useful.
In Daniel’s version, he had a family and a business and a life four states away, and he kept up with his mother the best he could. He visited when he could. He sent money when he had it. He wasn’t the one who was there, but he had acknowledged that limitation, he hadn’t pretended it wasn’t true.
When Mom died and the estate came up, he looked at the situation from the outside. He saw: his sister had lived in their mother’s house for twelve years without paying rent. The estate, which was technically an asset he half-owned through inheritance, had been partially subsidizing his sister’s housing for that entire time.
He had built a calculation out of that.