“Raymond, she was worried about you.”
That hurt more than I expected.
Diane had been dying, and somehow she had still been thinking about what would happen to me after she was gone.
Harold told me that during their meeting, Diane had been clear and calm.
She knew Darnell and his wife had begun asking casual questions in recent months—what the house was worth, whether we still owed anything on it, how our accounts were arranged.
Diane had not accused them of plotting anything.
She simply did not want my grief mixed with financial pressure.
“She said you would give away the roof over your own head before you let your son call you selfish,” Harold told me.
I closed my eyes.
That sounded exactly like her.
“And she said she wasn’t going to let that happen.”
I laughed once, but it came out broken.
Even gone, Diane was still arguing with my worst habits.
Two days later, Darnell came to the house.
He came alone.
When I opened the door, I almost didn’t recognize the expression on his face.
He looked exhausted.
Not defeated.
Not yet.
Just stripped of the confidence I had heard on the phone.
He stepped inside and glanced toward the living room.
“Where’s the letter?”
I pointed to the chair opposite mine at the kitchen table.
“Sit.”
He hesitated, then sat.
For a moment, we were surrounded by the remains of the life he had grown up in.
The old clock above the doorway.
The cabinet Diane had painted twice because she hated the first color.
A tiny scratch in the table from the year Darnell got a model airplane for Christmas and tried to build it without putting down newspaper.
He noticed the scratch too.
His thumb rubbed across it.
“Mom used to get so mad about this.”
“She pretended to.”
His mouth moved like he nearly smiled.
Then he remembered why he was there.
“Can I read it?”
I slid Diane’s letter across the table.
He opened it.
I did not read over his shoulder.
I had already asked Harold whether I should.
He told me Diane had left that choice to Darnell.
So I watched my son’s face instead.
At first, he looked defensive.
Then confused.
Then very still.
His eyes stopped moving halfway down the page.
He went back and read the same lines again.
“What?” I asked.
He shook his head.
A minute passed.
Then he covered his mouth with one hand.
I had not seen my son cry since he was a teenager.
He tried not to now.
But Diane had known exactly where to reach him.
Finally he pushed the letter toward me.
“You can read it.”
