He’d said: *You’ll see when the time comes.*
He had meant me to see it.
That was what I was asking for. Just to see what was actually there. To have the document run on what he actually wrote, not on what one person decided to read aloud.
I got that. The process made sure I got that. The sixty thousand followed from the document, and the document was in Mara Chen’s custody, and the formal process ran on the executed instrument. My father had done what he set out to do.
I had asked for the right thing through appropriate channels. The system, slowly and imperfectly, had done what it was supposed to do.
That’s not a particularly dramatic conclusion. But it’s the true one.
## Present Tense
It’s been eight months. The estate is closed. The money has been distributed. I am sitting in my apartment in Portland, in November, with the particular gray light that comes through these windows in November.
My relationship with Vanessa is — something. We text occasionally, not warmly. We’ve spoken twice since February, both times about practical things. There is a possibility that we will find a way to be sisters again in some genuine sense, at some point, when enough time has passed and enough has been said. There is also a possibility that we won’t. I hold both possibilities without deciding between them.
Aunt June and I talk more than we used to. This is probably the best thing that came out of any of this. She is someone who sees things clearly and says them honestly and doesn’t require the pretense that everything is fine, which in my experience is a rarer combination than it should be.