"I always told myself he gave up on Mom too easily that night," he finally said. "That if he'd just fought a little longer, insisted a little harder, she might have made it. I was nineteen. I needed somewhere to put that much anger, and he was standing right there."
"Nobody would blame a nineteen-year-old for needing somewhere to put that," I said. "I don't think Bennett ever did, honestly. I think he mostly just kept blaming himself instead."
I think he mostly just kept blaming himself instead.
I told him about the will then, about the two hundred and thirty thousand dollars, the safety deposit box, the rental property still generating income after all these years. I told him I intended to split everything evenly between us, regardless of what any legal document technically required, because I didn't believe Bennett had ever really wanted a hospital volunteer he'd known for three weeks to inherit a life he'd actually built for his son.
