“That’s a separate issue. The power expressly prohibited gifts to Grant.”
I looked toward my brother. He was fitting a box together without tape now, pressing the same flap down repeatedly.
Victor continued, “I know of no agreement compensating him with the proceeds. Don’t sign a release on the information you have.”
After the call, I folded the release along its existing crease and pushed it toward Grant.
“Victor says you could sell it. He says you couldn’t give yourself the proceeds.”
“Of course he says that. He wasn’t the one taking care of her.”
“Where did the closing money go?”
Grant took the paper, then set it down again.
“Into my account.”
“Your personal account?”
“Yes. It was compensation, Claire. For my time. For everything.”
“You said it was a gift.”
“You know what I meant.”
“No. I don’t.”
He picked up the tape dispenser and put it down without using it. “There are funeral expenses coming. Somebody has to handle those too. You can’t turn every practical decision into an accusation.”
“Show me the agreement.”
He gestured at the kitchen, at the cupboards he wanted emptied, but brought me nothing.
I stood and moved Mother’s cups away from the open box. My hands were shaking enough that the saucers clicked together.
“We can pay for her funeral,” I said. “That doesn’t explain paying you the price of her house.”
I left his pen on the table. There would still be packing to do. The buyers would still get their keys. But I wasn’t going to sign away the money just because he had put a deadline beside our mother’s death.
At hospice that afternoon, I had to sign for a bag of Mother’s belongings. Her cardigan was folded around her glasses case. Somebody had put her hairbrush in a smaller bag so the bristles wouldn’t catch the wool.
I kept checking the bottom, although I could see there was nothing else.
Nadine waited beside the desk while I worked the knot closed. I had meant to thank her and leave. Instead, I asked, “Did she ever say she wanted Grant to have the money from the house?”
Nadine put down the pen she was holding.
“He says it was for looking after her,” I added. I hated how much that sounded like asking a nurse to settle a family argument.
“Your mother left a message for you,” she said. “On my phone.”
I stopped pulling at the bag handles.
“She asked me to record it and give it to you after she died. She told me that herself, Claire. I witnessed her consent.”
“Why didn’t she just call me?”
“I can’t answer that. I can let you hear what she wanted you to hear.”
Nadine took me into a small room away from the desk. She placed her phone between us, then asked if I was ready. I nodded before I was.
Mother’s first breath came through louder than her voice. I reached toward the phone, wanting to turn it up, and Nadine adjusted the volume for me.
“Claire, let Grant sell the house. I don’t need it standing empty.”
I shut my eyes. For a moment I thought Grant had been right about all of it, and I had spent the morning making a terrible day worse.
Then Mother continued.
“But you handle the proceeds, under the will Victor has. That’s what I want. Speak to Victor. Don’t try to sort it out between yourselves.”
There was a pause long enough for me to hear a faint rustle. I knew that impatient breath she took when she had said something plainly and didn’t want to repeat it.
“Grant can do the sale. You do what comes after.”
Nadine stopped the recording when it ended. I kept staring at her phone.
“She wanted it sold,” I said.
“Yes.”
I had been angry at the buyers all morning. Now I had to put that anger somewhere else without pretending it had never been there.
“Could you send it to me?”
Nadine transferred the file while I sat beside her. I waited until the copy appeared on my phone and checked that it opened. Then I thanked her, awkwardly, with Mother’s bag caught between my knees.
In the car, I almost played it again. Instead, I called Grant.
I told him where I had been and what Mother had said. He let me finish, which made me hope, briefly, that he would stop fighting me.
“She was confused by then,” he said.
“She asked Nadine to record it.”
“She had good hours and bad hours. You weren’t there every day.”
