“She manipulated him. He was sick, lonely, and she crawled into his life.”
For the first time, I did not lower my eyes.
“Maybe I said yes because I was tired of drowning,” I said. “But I would have stayed if he had lost everything. The box was the gift.”
She laughed, sharp and fragile.
“You expect us to believe that?”
I unfolded the letter and read one line aloud.
“I watched you refuse my check the night before the doctor called. You said you needed only me. You did not know you were carrying our child. I guessed after the toast, the tea, the mornings you went pale. I booked the appointment so you would be cared for.”
The room became still.
Marlene’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again.
“That proves it,” she said, though her voice had thinned. “She trapped him. A baby, at his age.”
“He knew before I did,” I said. “He wrote it before he died. Read the date.”
Her brothers stared down at the floor. The lawyer slid the page forward, but she would not touch it.
“You’re pregnant,” one brother whispered.
“Yes.”
The lawyer set the envelope down and gave me a small nod, the kind Russell used to give me across the breakfast table.
I picked up the box, the letter, and my coat. Nobody stopped me.
Outside, the air smelled of rain. I held the box against my chest the way I had once held my final paycheck, like something rare and fragile.
For a while, I expected victory to feel brighter. It did not. The first weeks were filled with paperwork, nausea, and rooms that echoed with his absence. Marlene sent one letter through her attorney, then nothing else. Her brothers accepted their allowances and kept their distance. I kept the charity photograph on the dresser, not because I looked beautiful in it, but because I looked unguarded.
