Chapter 4: The House on Carver Street
I didn't go to the house that day.
I drove home, made tea I didn't drink, and sat at my kitchen table until it was dark.
The letter was on the table in front of me.
I didn't open it again.
I just needed it nearby.
The next morning, Robert called.
"There's no pressure on timing," he said.
"But when you're ready to see the property, I can arrange access.
The utilities are still connected.
Elliot kept everything current."
"He kept the utilities running."
"He did.
Up until about six weeks before he passed."
I thought about that.
Elliot, sick, still paying the electric bill on a house he'd already decided to give away.
"I'll go today," I said.
Carver Street was on the east side of the city, in a neighborhood that had been working-class for decades and was only now beginning to change.
The house was a two-story craftsman with a wide front porch and a maple tree in the yard that had dropped half its leaves across the steps.
I remembered the day Elliot had driven me past it.
We hadn't stopped.
He'd just slowed down and said, *"That one.
Look at that porch.
Someone built that to last."*
I'd agreed.
I hadn't thought about it again until now.
The key Robert had given me was old, the kind with a long barrel.
It fit the lock on the first try.
Inside, the house smelled like cedar and something faintly sweet — a candle, maybe, burned down long ago.
The floors were original hardwood, slightly uneven near the front door.
The walls were painted a warm off-white that had yellowed only a little at the edges.
I walked through slowly.
The kitchen had a window over the sink that looked out at a small backyard.
A raised garden bed along the fence, empty now.
A bird feeder hanging from the maple's lowest branch, still half-full.
He had been here.
Recently enough that the bird feeder still had seed.
I stood at the kitchen window for a long time.
My phone rang.
I expected Robert.
It was Dana.
I almost didn't answer.
Then I did.
"I'm at the house," I said, before she could speak.
A pause.
"I know.
Robert told me you were going today." Another pause.
"I'm outside."
I turned.
Through the kitchen window I could see the front of the house, but not the street.
I walked to the front door and opened it.
Dana was standing at the bottom of the porch steps.
She was wearing a dark coat and holding a paper coffee cup in each hand.
"I wasn't sure if you'd let me in," she said.
"I wasn't sure either."
She held up one of the cups.
"It's just coffee.
I didn't know how you take it."
"Black is fine."
She came up the steps.
I moved aside and she walked in, stopping just inside the doorway, looking at the entryway the way I had — slowly, taking inventory.
"I helped him find it," she said.
"Three years ago.
Before he was sick.
He wanted a project.
Something to fix up." She looked at the ceiling.
"He never got around to most of it."
"It doesn't need much."
"No." She handed me the coffee.
"He was right about that."
We stood in the entryway without speaking for a moment.
"I owe you an apology," Dana said.
"Yesterday.
The way I spoke to you."
"You didn't know me."
"I knew enough.
I knew he loved you.
I just — I was angry at him for a long time.
For leaving.
For deciding on his own.
And you were easier to be angry at than a man who isn't here anymore."
I looked at her.
She was staring at the floor.
"He didn't tell me he was sick," I said.
"I spent a year thinking I'd done something wrong."
Dana closed her eyes briefly.
"I know.
He wouldn't let us say anything.
He was so certain he was protecting you." She opened her eyes.
"He was protecting you.
That part was real.
But it cost you something he didn't have the right to take."
That was the truest thing anyone had said to me in two days.
"Why did he structure it this way?" I asked.
"The condition.
Making my acceptance tied to your inheritance."
Dana was quiet for a moment.
"Because he knew me," she said finally.
"He knew that if there was no condition, I would have found a way to talk you out of accepting it.
I would have told you it wasn't appropriate.
That you barely knew him.
That it wasn't fair to the family." She looked at me steadily.
"I would have been wrong.
But I would have done it."
"Would Phillip have stopped you?"
"Phillip never stops me." The corner of her mouth moved.
"He just waits for me to run out of steam."
I almost smiled.
I didn't quite get there.
"There's something else," Dana said.
Her voice changed — careful now, the way people sound when they've been rehearsing.
"Something Elliot didn't put in the letter."
I looked at her.
"He wrote you another one," she said.
"Earlier.
About eight months ago.
He gave it to me to hold, and then three months later he asked me to destroy it."
My chest tightened.
"Did you?"
Dana reached into her coat pocket and set a second envelope on the entryway table.
May you like
"No," she said.
"I didn't."
