Freshman Just Wanted Dinner — Until Three Bullies Made a Mistake That Cost Them Everything
Chapter 24
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"Yes," her mother said. "I would have worried you were going to feel like you had a responsibility you didn't ask for.""I do have a responsibility I didn't ask for," Claire said."I know," her mother said. "But she thought you could handle it.""She named me in a document on the day I was born.""She named you in everything on the day you were born," her mother said softly. "Every decision she made for the last thirty years of her life had your name on it somewhere. She just didn't always tell you."Claire sat with that. She looked at the framed photocopy of the letter she had made on the library printer before coming home:A place is just a place until someone puts something of themselves into it. That was what her mother had told her Eleanor used to say. She understood it differently now: Eleanor had put herself into Miller's Diner in 1961, a girl of eighteen crying quietly over a piece of pie and a closed door; she had put herself into Hartwell University in 1991, a woman in her late forties writing a check large enough to make sure the door stayed open for someone else; and she had put herself into a manila envelope in a back room of a diner on the corner of Maple and Fifth, waiting thirty-five years to be found by a nineteen-year-old girl with a backpack that leaned to the right, a ruined notebook, and a hearing at 9:00 on a Wednesday."I'm going to be okay," Claire told her mother."I know you are," her mother said."I'm going to handle this the right way.""I know you will.""I'm going to need a lawyer," Claire said. "Not for me personally. For the gift agreement. Someone who can advise me on what the codicil actually gives me the right to do."Her mother was quiet for a moment. "Your grandmother had a lawyer," she said. "She used him for the scholarship paperwork. He would be very old now, but he might have a firm.""Can you find the name?" Claire said."I'll look through her papers tomorrow morning," her mother said. "Thank you, Claire.""Yeah?"A long pause. "She would be so proud of you," her mother said. "For how you've handled all of this: for not reacting when that boy knocked over your water; for going to the right person first thing Monday morning; for sitting in that diner and reading that letter carefully instead of panicking."Claire looked at the lamp on her desk. She did not trust herself to say anything for a moment. "I learned from the best," she said finally. She meant her mother; she also meant Eleanor. She meant both of them at once, which was a thing that was possible.