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Marcus added it up on a legal pad. More than seven hundred and seventy thousand dollars.
I sat in his office and felt sick.
That night, I made my own list. It felt strange next to those numbers.
Two years of mornings. About two hundred fifty workdays each year. Two coffees a day. His black, mine with cream.
About thirteen hundred dollars, all told. That was what I had spent on Larry.
But the list couldn’t hold the rest.
It couldn’t hold the morning he gave me his gloves because mine had a hole in them. Or the afternoon he waited outside the station for an hour in the rain because I told him I had a hard meeting and he wanted to ask how it went.
It couldn’t hold the day he told me I had a laugh like somebody he used to know.
I understood now who he meant.
I thought about Larry, sitting on cold concrete for eleven years, a few miles from a building that belonged to him. While his brother collected the rent.
I thought about Rose and Emily, and the icy road, and a man so broken by grief that he let everything go.
And I thought about the last thing he wrote. Please do something good with it.
I didn’t know yet what that meant. But I knew one thing.
It did not mean handing it to Dale.
On Sunday afternoon, I was carrying groceries up my front steps when I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned around.
A tall man in a camel coat was standing at the bottom of the steps. He had Larry’s jaw and Larry’s gray eyes.
But nothing else about him looked like Larry at all.
He was holding a bouquet of white roses.
Part 4: The Brother on My Steps
Dale smiled when I turned around. It was a salesman’s smile.
He said he had come to apologize. He said he had been upset on the phone. He said grief did strange things to people.
He held out the roses. I didn’t take them.
He said he didn’t blame me. He said Larry could be very persuasive, even at the end.
Then he said he wanted to make me a fair offer.
Fifty thousand dollars, he said. In exchange, I would sign a document agreeing the marriage was never valid, and give up any claim to the building.
That’s generous, he said. More than generous, for eleven minutes at a courthouse.
I didn’t answer.
His voice softened. He said he was Larry’s only real family. He said I had known his brother for two years. He had known him for fifty-eight.
He said he had tried to help Larry for years. He said Larry refused every hand he offered.
Then he said something I will never forget.
Think about how this looks, Sarah. A young woman marries a dying homeless alcoholic, and a month later she owns a million-dollar building. People will talk. Your employer will talk.
I felt that one land. It was meant to.
For one moment, I wondered if he was right. If that’s how it looked.
Then I thought about Larry’s handwriting. The shaky letters. The line at the bottom.
Please do something good with it.
Mr. Whitaker, I said, your brother wasn’t confused. A doctor confirmed it. Two nurses witnessed his will.
He didn’t marry me because he was sick. He married me because he knew exactly what you would do.
Dale’s smile disappeared.
I kept my voice steady. For eleven years, you collected his rent while he slept on the street. You never sent him a single dollar.
He said that was a lie. He said I didn’t understand the expenses.
Then you can explain them to Marcus Webb, I said. And to the court.
His face went red. He said he would contest the marriage. He said he would contest the will. He said he would tie me up in court for years until I gave up.
