She set the knitting down.
“In her last week, Rosie told me about you every day. She called you the boy who chose to stay. Those were her words.”
“Would you say that in court?” I asked.
“I’ll say it anywhere they’ll let me.”
“Tomorrow you’ll have a settlement offer.”
That night I called a legal aid attorney, a tired woman named Denise who answered her phone at nine in the evening. I gathered everything. Visitor logs. Receipts for flowers and chocolates. Statements from three nurses and an aide.
Denise read it through at her kitchen table.
“Jeremy, I’ll take this. But I want you ready. They’re going to call you a predator on the stand. They’re going to bring up the money. Every dollar.”
“I know.”
“And tomorrow you’ll have a settlement offer. I can already feel it coming.”
“Walk away now, or we will take everything you have and everything you will ever have.”
It came by noon. Tim’s attorney emailed a single line.
“Walk away now, or we will take everything you have and everything you will ever have.”
I read it twice, then I closed my laptop and thought of Rosie’s hand squeezing mine.
***
The probate courtroom felt smaller than I had imagined. Tim sat across the aisle in a pressed suit, his lawyer whispering in his ear.
