Speaking of awkward, I don’t think anything beats that afternoon at the lawyer’s office while Mrs. Rhode’s niece and myself were waiting to hear what she had written in her will. I didn’t really find Mrs. Rhode’s nieces’ glances at me strange because I guess she believed she had every right to be mad at me for expecting a share from her aunt’s estate and money.
But of course, there is more to the story.
While the two of sat sat there in complete silence, the lawyer could barely look away from the folder that was on the table in front of him.
The property on Willow Street would be given to charity, her money would go to a bunch of organizations she had listed, and her niece would get the jewelry.
And yes, that was it. I didn’t receive a penny from Mrs. Rhode. I was convinced my name would pop up on the next page, but there wasn’t another page of her will. So, I was in a complete shock because Mrs. Rhode, my elderly neighbor, promised to leave everything to me if I looked after her during the last years of her life.
But from what her lawyer read there and then, I was left with nothing.
Was I angry? Of course I was. I also felt embarrassed. But most of all, I was disappointed for thinking that Mrs. Rhode cared about me as much as I did for her.
But let me tell you more about my life prior to meeting Mrs. Rhode.
I was raised in the foster care system after being abandoned by my mother and living in the shadows as my father spent his youth in jail. Early on, I learned that promises were worthless.
I wandered into town simply because it was cheap and no one bothered to ask questions. Finally, I found employment in the local diner called Joe’s Diner after approaching one day during breakfast hours and asking for work.
Joe was quick to employ me, considering the fact that I had absolutely no experience working in the industry before. Despite his gruff and abrasive nature, Joe was truly one of the nicest people I have ever met. Every day after work, he would force me to eat by making it seem like he only did so to save him from the paperwork if I fainted.
Mrs. Rhode entered my life soon after.
She came to the diner every Tuesday and Thursday at exactly eight in the morning. The first time I served her, she sized me up and said that I looked like I could doze off right there in her waffles.
This was pretty much how she showed she cared about people.
Sure she was sarcastic, blunt, opinionated and sometimes difficult, but she had her eyes wide open to the world. She could tell when I was tired, hungry, needed a haircut, or just pretended to be alright.
To someone who had lived unnoticed for the most part, such a level of attention felt frightening. It became almost too caring.
On one particular day when I was bringing home groceries, she beckoned me from her porch and offered me the chance to earn some reasonable money in helping her out.
Over a very bad cup of tea, she came right down to business by telling me that she had become old, her health was failing, and she required a trustworthy person to assist her with various chores and errands.
This is when she made me an offer.
If I stayed and helped her until the end of her life, she would leave everything she owned to me.
Honestly, her offer did seem ridiculous because I hardly knew her. But I was broke and there was some isolated corner in me that somehow hoped that perhaps somebody might actually choose me one day.
I agreed.
At first, it was just work. I’d take her to doctor’s appointments, picked up medications, fix things around the house, cleaned gutters, organized the bills, and carried groceries. All while she moaned and groaned about everything. If I was four minutes late, the whole world seemed to end. But because of some reason, I never stopped returning to her place and helping her with everything she needed.
Eventually, things changed between us. She began inviting me to join for dinner despite her cooking being terrible. We would watch game shows and she would shout her answers to them as if they could actually hear what she was saying.
Gradually, she began telling me more about herself and before I realized it, I was also opening up. I was telling her things that I had never told another soul, from the time spent in foster care homes to how I learnt not to rely on anyone and how survival was all I knew as a future.
One evening she studied my face intently and asked me if I dreamed of anything other than making my rent every month.
I truly had no idea how to respond.
I admitted that maybe one day I would move up at the diner, but even saying that out loud felt unrealistic.
She looked unimpressed by my lack of ambition.
However, after we had that talk, there was something about the way she regarded me that made her more approachable. During that winter, she even knitted me the ugliest green socks because she had noticed that my boots were leaking during the rains.
At some point, Joe came to realize that I spent most of my evenings helping her.
Explaining my arrangements with Mrs. Rhode made him burst out laughing until he almost let a coffee pot slip from his hands. Eventually, he also realized that she truly liked me, and that must have been quite unusual for her.
What was weird is that somehow at some point, helping her around stopped feeling like a job and her house became the closest thing to what I would consider a home.
And then, after about a year since she entered my life, I discovered her sitting in silence in her armchair while the television played in the background and her tea lay untouched on the table in front of her.
That’s when I knew she was dead.
I still cried out her name, though.
The whole funeral ceremony is just a blur. I remained hidden somewhere in the corner, crying more than I should have been allowed to based on the circumstances.
And finally, there was the reading of the will, which made me realize everything was between us was just a lie.
The next morning, there was a knock at my door.
I opened it and saw Mrs. Rhode’s lawyer standing with an old metal lunchbox in his hand.
He told me that Mrs. Rhode had left some further instructions just for me alone.
In the lunchbox was a key and an envelope addressed to me. As I broke the seal of the letter, my hands shook.
Mrs. Rhode had mentioned that she knew that I might feel upset after reading the will but she thought that what she had left me was much more important than any house or money.
She explained that while she had known from the beginning that she got my help because I expected the inheritance in return, some time between running errands, eating meals together, and watching television, I became the son she never expected to have.
I fell apart when I read those lines.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
For months, she had been working with Joe behind my back, buying into partial ownership of the diner for me. Joe had promised to teach me how to handle the place. The key to the diner was in the box.
She talked about how houses could fall apart, how money could be wasted. So, she wanted to give me something entirely different; a future.
All I can recall is running out of the apartment once I finished the letter. In one instant, I was crying on the floor, and in another, I was rushing toward the diner with the key in my grasp.
Joe was standing behind the counter refilling some sugar dispensers when I arrived at the diner. I raised the key and asked him if all of that was true.
Yes, he handed me a folder filled with legal documents declaring me as his business partner.
For the first time in my life, there was something real that I owned.
“Mrs. Rhode was so damn proud of you.” As usual, Joe followed up with telling me to stop crying because we opened at five the following morning and I needed to learn the business.
But when he said those things, everything changed.
Until then, my entire life had been just about getting through each week. Each payday, each rent check, each horrible day.
Mrs. Rhode had given me something that no one else ever did.
She allowed me to dream.
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