For Six Years I Drove My Mother to Chemo Alone, Then My Brothers Read the Will

Part 1

The lawyer slid the folder across the table and my oldest brother laughed before he even opened it.

“Let me guess,” Kevin said. “She left the house to Rachel.”

He said it the way you’d say *let me guess, it’s raining*. Bored. Already annoyed.

I kept my hands in my lap. My mother had been dead for eleven days and my brothers had flown in from Denver and Charlotte the night before the funeral and were flying out the morning after the will was read. Six days total, between the two of them.

I had driven our mother to sixty-eight chemotherapy appointments. I know because I kept the parking receipts in a shoebox in her kitchen. She thought it was funny. She’d take the little yellow slip from me at the end of each drive and tuck it into the box herself, like we were saving them for something.

“Before we begin,” the lawyer said. His name was Mr. Ostrander and he was maybe sixty, gray suit, the kind of man who says *before we begin* when he means *shut up*. “Your mother left a letter to be read aloud first. She was very specific about that.”

Kevin sighed. Michael, my other brother, checked his phone.

“Go ahead,” I said.

Mr. Ostrander cleared his throat.

*To my three children. Kevin, Michael, and Rachel. If you are hearing this, I am gone, and I want you to know I loved you all very much, in the exact same amount, even though I did not always show it in the exact same way.*

Kevin snorted. Michael did not look up from his phone.

*I want to say something about the house first, because I know that is what you came for.*

Now Michael looked up.

*The house on Belden Street is worth, according to the appraisal your sister paid for last spring, three hundred and forty thousand dollars. It is paid off. It has been paid off since your father died in 2011. It is the largest asset I have.*

I felt my throat close a little. I hadn’t told my brothers about the appraisal. I’d had it done because Mom asked me to, so she could plan. She’d wanted everything tidy.

*I have thought about this house for a very long time. Longer than any of you know. And I have made a decision that some of you will not like. I want to explain it before Mr. Ostrander reads the actual paperwork, because I do not want any of you to be angry at each other. I want you to be angry at me, if you must be angry. I am not here anymore, so I can take it.*

Kevin leaned forward. His jaw had done the thing it does when he’s about to argue with somebody.

*The house is going to go to,*

Mr. Ostrander paused. He looked up at us over his reading glasses, and I understood, in that pause, that he had read this letter before, and he knew what was coming, and he was giving us one last second to be a family before we weren’t.

*The house is going to go to one of you, in full. The other two will receive one dollar each from my estate. No life insurance. No savings. Those have been distributed already, and I will explain that in a moment.*

Michael’s phone hit the table face down.

“What?” he said. “What did she just say?”

Mr. Ostrander did not answer him. He kept reading.

*I know this seems cruel. I promise you it is not. I made this decision six years ago, when I was first diagnosed, and I did not change it once in six years, even when I had every opportunity to. If you want to know why, you will find a shoebox in the kitchen, on top of the refrigerator. Please look in it before you decide how you feel about me.*

*The house goes to,*

Mr. Ostrander turned the page.

Kevin was already standing up.

“Just say it,” he said. “Just say the goddamn name.”

Mr. Ostrander looked at me. Not at my brothers. At me. And I realized, with a sick drop in my stomach, that I did not actually know what my mother had decided. I had assumed. I had assumed for six years. But she had never once said it out loud.

He opened his mouth.