Maybe he didn't fake it. Maybe that's the worst part.
Dad left me the house on Linden Street, paid off. He left me forty-six thousand dollars in savings and a small life insurance policy. And he left me a note, tucked inside his old badge case, in his cramped cop handwriting.
Nora. Keep the house. It'll always be worth more than they say. Love, Dad.
I didn't understand that last part at the time. I do now.
Here is what I did with my inheritance.
Derek's business had been struggling for years. He would never say so out loud, because Derek is a proud man, but I kept the books. I saw the equipment loans. I saw the back payroll taxes. I saw the numbers on the screen at midnight while he was upstairs asleep.
Two winters ago, after an ice storm ate three of his trucks, I sat at the desk and did the math. Then I quietly moved ninety-two thousand dollars out of the money my father left me and into the business account, one deposit at a time, each one labeled as a customer prepayment.
He never asked where the deposits came from. I never told him.
I did it because I loved him. I did it because I knew he would feel ashamed if he learned his wife had rescued him. I told myself that a marriage sometimes needs a little kindness that doesn't announce itself.
That was my second silence. There were more coming.
I noticed things in those books, too. Small things. A few debit charges that didn't match any vendor. A pattern of payments always just under five thousand dollars. Numbers a trained eye can't help but see.
I noticed them, and I put them aside, and I waited for Derek to tell me himself.
I'll tell you what those charges were later. It turned out the answer was sitting in my own kitchen the whole time.
In September, the month before Lorraine moved in, Derek sat me down at the dining room table after Eli was asleep.
He had a legal pad and a cup of coffee and his warmest smile.
"Nora, I've been thinking about Linden Street."
"What about it?"
"It's just sitting there empty. It's costing us property taxes and insurance and utilities every month." He turned the legal pad so I could see his numbers. "If we sold it, we'd clear four hundred grand, easy. We could put it toward the business. Two new trucks, a county plow contract, maybe an office building. Eli's whole future, hon."
I looked at his neat columns.
I looked at my husband's face, his open, boyish, trustworthy face.
"No," I said.
"Nora—"
"It's my father's house, Derek. I'm not ready. Maybe someday. But not now."