"He visited," Helen said. "He lived here."
"I know. I meant — he carried her with him. Even into rooms where she couldn't follow."
They ended in the living room. Late-afternoon light, wood paneling, the drapes Helen had not changed in twelve years. Helen poured the coffee. This time both cups stayed hot long enough to matter.
"I've decided something," Helen said.
Margaret waited.
"I'm not going to ask you to refuse the house. And I'm not going to let Diane contest the will." Helen wrapped her hands around her cup. "But I'm also not going to walk out of here next month and hand you the keys like a prize for endurance. Robert made a mess and called it provision. I get to decide what provision looks like now."
"What does it look like?"
"A sale," Helen said. "We sell the house together — you as the legal beneficiary, me as the woman who made it a home. We split the proceeds. Not half and half. I want sixty percent. You get forty. You get enough to find a place that isn't a duplex about to be sold. I get enough to buy a smaller place near Diane, or stay in town, or do something I haven't imagined yet because I've spent forty-one years imagining this address as the end of every sentence. And we put in writing that neither of us will speak unkindly of him to Diane or to anyone else who asks. He was complicated. We will not simplify him into a villain to make ourselves feel cleaner."