"Forty-one years," she said softly. "They were real. Even the parts he hid. Especially the parts I kept."
No one corrected her. In the quiet that followed, the three cups steamed, the cat investigated a sunbeam, and the story that had begun with a manila folder and a highlighted line settled, at last, into the long work of being lived rather than merely survived.
Helen refilled the coffee. Diane scratched Walter behind the ears. Margaret smiled the small, careful smile of a woman who had spent decades learning how not to take up too much space and was, slowly, unlearning it in the presence of people who had every reason to ask her to stay small.
"Same time next year?" Diane asked, half joking, half not.
Helen glanced at Margaret. Margaret nodded once.
"Same time next year," Helen said. "Bring nothing but the truth you can carry. Leave the rest at the door."
And for the first time since the lawyer drove away into that ordinary Tuesday, the late light felt less like evidence and more like a witness — present, impartial, and willing, if asked, to stay until the cups were empty and the women were ready to go home to the lives they had built from the ruins of a will.