Maybe we should have.
Pride exists on every side.
Margaret occasionally mentioned land from her childhood.
A strip near the old western road.
Something her grandfather had bought.
I assumed it had been sold decades earlier.
She never explained.
Then, in the final two years of her life, she began asking strange questions.
“Do you trust Gideon Hale?”
I looked at her.
“Who?”
“My attorney.”
“You have an attorney?”
“I’m old, not dead.”
Margaret was ninety-one.
“You haven’t mentioned an attorney once in twelve years.”
“You never asked.”
“What do you need a lawyer for?”
“Old business.”
“What old business?”
She smiled.
“If it becomes your business, you’ll know.”
That was Margaret.
She could make secrecy sound like a weather forecast.
I did not push.
I assumed she had an old will.
Maybe instructions about funeral arrangements.
Nothing more.
Her final winter was brutal.
A respiratory infection weakened her.
