The first time Melinda told me I was being selfish with my dead husband’s money, Dale’s coffee mug was still sitting beside the sink.
I had washed it that morning, although no one had used it in three months. The blue ceramic was chipped along the handle where Dale had once knocked it against the garage floor. I kept telling myself I would put it away eventually. I never did. Some objects become useless after a person dies. Others become evidence that the person was once there.
Melinda sat across from me at the kitchen table with her leather handbag beside her chair and both hands folded neatly in front of her. She had dressed carefully for the conversation—cream blouse, dark trousers, gold earrings. Nothing about her suggested that she had come to ask a grieving widow for money.
“Margaret,” she said, “I don’t think you understand what I’m asking.”
“I understand perfectly.”
Her mouth tightened.
She had been explaining for nearly twenty minutes. Eric and she were under pressure. There were expenses. Something involving their business had not gone according to plan. Their mortgage had increased. The children needed things. Every reason sounded reasonable when considered alone, which I suspected was why she delivered them separately.
What she wanted was access to the investment account Dale had left for me.
Not a loan of two thousand dollars.
Not help with a repair.
Access.
I rested my palms on the table. “Your father-in-law left that account for my living expenses.”
“And Eric is his son.”
“I know who Eric is.”
Melinda leaned back. The chair gave a faint wooden creak. “Then you must understand why this feels strange.”
“What feels strange?”
“That everything went to you.”
For a moment I thought grief had made me mishear her.
The refrigerator hummed behind me. Rain tapped softly against the window over the sink. Dale had loved rainy afternoons. He used to stand at that window with his coffee and complain that the grass would grow faster than he could cut it.
I looked directly at Melinda. “Everything did not go to me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. Tell me exactly what you mean.”
Her fingers separated, then folded together again. “Dale accumulated that money during his lifetime. Eric is his only son. It seems reasonable that some of it should eventually benefit Eric’s family.”
“Eventually?”
She hesitated.
There it was.
Not grief. Not concern for me. Not even embarrassment.
Expectation.
I had seen hints of it before Dale died, although I had refused to name them. Melinda had always been interested in numbers. How much had we paid for the house? Was Dale’s pension indexed? Had he sold his shares in a certain company? Did we still own the land his father had once talked about?
Dale usually answered her questions with jokes.
Once, after she left, I asked why he never gave her straight answers.
He had looked over the top of his newspaper.
“Because people who need to know something usually tell you why they need to know it.”
At the time, I laughed.
Sitting across from Melinda now, I remembered the exact expression on his face.
“Eric has never asked me for this money,” I said.
“He doesn’t like discussing finances with you.”
“That has never stopped him before.”
“You’re his mother. He doesn’t want you thinking badly of him.”
“And you don’t mind?”
Her cheeks colored.
“That isn’t fair.”
“Perhaps not. But you came here.”
She pushed her chair back an inch. “Because somebody has to deal with reality.”
I looked around the kitchen Dale and I had remodeled ourselves fifteen years earlier. The cabinet under the sink still hung slightly crooked because he had insisted he could install it without measuring twice. His reading glasses remained in the drawer beside the telephone. Three months of widowhood had taught me more about reality than Melinda could possibly explain.
“What reality?”
“That you’re sitting on money you don’t need while your family is struggling.”
The sentence landed harder than I expected.
I did not answer immediately.
Dale and I had never been wealthy in the way Melinda seemed to imagine. We had been careful. He worked. I worked. We paid the mortgage early because Dale hated owing anyone anything. We drove cars until mechanics began greeting us by first name. We saved because both of us remembered parents who had not been able to.
The investment account was not a treasure chest.
It was the difference between independence and becoming dependent on Eric when I was eighty.
“How much do you think I need?” I asked.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It is exactly what you meant.”
“Margaret—”
“How many years am I allowed to live before the account becomes inconvenient?”
She stared at me.
I hated how sharp I sounded. More than that, I hated that part of me still wanted to apologize.
That had always been my weakness. Dale knew it. Eric knew it. Perhaps Melinda knew it best of all.
I stood and carried my untouched tea to the sink.
Behind me, Melinda said, “Dale would have helped us.”
I stopped.
She could have asked for twice as much money and not wounded me as deeply.
I turned slowly.
“You do not get to tell me what my husband would have done.”
Her face changed. “I loved him too.”
“I never said you didn’t.”
“He cared about his grandchildren.”
“Of course he did.”
“Then why are you acting as though helping them would somehow betray him?”
I stared at her for several seconds.
“Because you still haven’t told me what the money is for.”
Silence.
It was brief, but unmistakable.
Then she reached for her handbag.
“I told you. Family expenses.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s enough of one.”
“Not for access to my account.”
She stood.
For the first time since arriving, the polished composure disappeared. “Your account?”
“Yes.”
“Dale earned that money.”
“And Dale left it to me.”
Her jaw tightened.
I expected another argument.
Instead she said something quieter.
“Are you sure about that?”
The question followed me long after she walked out of my house.
That evening, I opened the drawer where Dale had kept our important paperwork.
I found insurance documents, tax returns, the deed to the house and a thick folder from Mr. Dawson, our financial adviser.
At the bottom was an authorization form I did not remember seeing.
Dale’s signature appeared on the final page.
And beside it was Melinda’s name.
