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“The residence on Willow Street will be donated to Saint Matthew’s Outreach Charity.”
I blinked hard. “What?”
He didn’t even look up.
“Personal savings are to be distributed between Saint Matthew’s Church and several charitable organizations. To my niece, I leave my jewelry collection.”
I sat frozen, waiting for my name.
Mrs. Rhode had promised me everything. She said if I stayed beside her during the final years of her life, she would make sure I was taken care of.
The lawyer turned one more page, then calmly shut the folder.
“That concludes the reading.”
I stared at him in disbelief.
“That’s it? But she promised me…”
The realization hit so hard my stomach twisted.
Had she lied to me the entire time?
I stood abruptly and walked out before either of them could watch me fall apart.
By the time I reached my tiny rental house, my chest physically hurt. I slammed the door behind me and collapsed fully dressed across the bed, boots and all.
At first, all I felt was humiliation.
Then anger.
Then that familiar feeling I’d carried most of my life — the awful certainty that I was the fool in a story everyone else understood long before I did.
But underneath all of that was grief.
Real grief.
Because somewhere between her sarcastic insults, terrible cooking, and game shows, I had started believing I mattered to Mrs. Rhode as much as she mattered to me.
Maybe I should’ve known better.
I grew up in foster care. My mother abandoned me after I was born, and my father spent most of my life in prison. I learned young that adults could promise anything and mean nothing at all. I learned how to keep my belongings packed tightly in trash bags and how not to cry when strangers stopped pretending they cared.
When I aged out, nobody hugged me goodbye.
Nobody asked where I would go.
I ended up in that town because rent was cheap and nobody cared enough to ask questions.
I survived by working miserable jobs for miserable bosses until I stumbled into Joe’s Diner one morning during a breakfast rush.
Joe looked like he’d been carved from old concrete. Thick arms. Permanent scowl. Voice like gravel.
“You ever carried three plates at once?” he asked.
“No.”
“You got ten minutes to learn.”
That was my interview.
Oddly enough, it became the closest thing I ever had to stability.
Joe barked constantly, but at the end of long shifts he shoved burgers toward me and growled, “Eat before you pass out and make paperwork for me.”
Mrs. Rhode came into the diner every Tuesday and Thursday at exactly eight in the morning.
The first time I waited on her, she squinted at my nametag.
“James,” she muttered. “You look tired enough to collapse into my waffle.”
“Long week.”
She snorted. “Try being eighty-five.”
That was our introduction.
After that, she always requested my section.
“You ever smile, son?” she asked once.
“Sometimes.”
“I doubt it.”
Continued on the next page
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