Started again.
“I’m not saying you forced anything.
I’m saying he was vulnerable and the timing is very convenient.”
I looked at him steadily.
“I understand why it looks that way.”
“Do you.” Not a question.
“Daniel, I didn’t know about the house.
I didn’t know about the estate.
I didn’t know about you.
When your father proposed, I thought he was a dying man who wanted to spend his last weeks with someone he’d loved when he was young.
That’s all I understood it to be.”
“And the money?”
“I don’t need it.”
He made a short sound.
“Everyone needs one point four million dollars.”
“I have a pension.
I have this apartment.
I have enough.” I kept my voice even.
“I’m not asking you to believe me today.
I’m asking you to sit down.”
He didn’t sit.
But he unbuttoned his coat.
“He never talked about you,” Daniel said.
“Not once.
My whole life, not once.
And then he’s dying and suddenly you appear and he marries you and leaves you everything.” His voice was controlled but something underneath it was not.
“I want to know what you were to him.”
“I was his first love,” I said.
“When we were seventeen.
I left for college.
He stayed.
We never saw each other again until I walked into his hospital room.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then he reached into his coat and pulled out an envelope.
