The courtroom laughs. The judge tries not to.
Meanwhile, your life remains suspended between semesters, work shifts, legal briefs, and impossible possibility. You still take the bus. Still ration groceries. Still scrub coffee stains off diner counters at midnight. Yet now there is also a house in an alley that might become yours if the law remembers how to recognize truth.
You visit it sometimes with Greer’s permission while probate crawls forward.
The first time you go back alone, the silence nearly knocks you backward. Without Mrs. Mercer in it, the place feels both familiar and abandoned in a deeper way, like a stage after the audience has gone. You stand in the kitchen and imagine her at the table, criticizing your chopping technique. In the living room you look at the piano, the armchair, the photo of Arthur in uniform, the crocheted blanket still draped over the couch.
