I took care of my 85-year-old neighbor

to.

Mrs. Rhode promised me.

For over a year, I had driven her to doctor appointments, picked up prescriptions, shoveled snow from her sidewalk at six in the morning, fixed broken cabinets, cleaned gutters, cooked terrible frozen dinners when her arthritis got bad, and stayed through nights when she could not sleep because the pain in her hips made her cry quietly into the dark.

She told me againand again:

“When I’m gone, everything I have becomes yours.”

The lawyer flipped one final page.

Then closed the folder.

“That concludes the reading.”

The room went silent.

I stared at him.