I was having a hard time surviving when my sick neighbor gave me an offer: look after her, and she would give everything to me when she passed. I said yes, yet during the reading of her will, I received absolutely zero! I assumed she had played me, until the following morning, when her attorney handed me something that made my legs completely weak.
I waited in an attorney’s room right across from Mrs. Higgins’s niece. Every passing minute, she stared at me like I was a piece of trash.
The attorney cleared his throat, opened up a file, and began speaking in a boring tone. “The house on Willow Street will be given to Saint Matthew’s Outreach Charity.”
I blinked my eyes. “Excuse me?”
He kept his eyes down. “All cash savings will be split between Saint Matthew’s Church and a few other helpful groups. To my niece, I pass down my jewelry boxes.”
Advertisements
I sat frozen, waiting to hear my own name. Mrs. Higgins swore I would receive it all if I took care of her during her final years!
The attorney flipped a single sheet, and shut the file. “That finishes the reading.”
I gazed right at him. “Is that really it? But she swore to me…”
A realization hit me so intensely that my stomach completely sank. Did Mrs. Higgins make a fool out of me?
I got up and rushed out of that room before anyone could notice my tears.
By the moment I reached my apartment, my heart was aching.
I walked inside, slammed the door shut, and collapsed onto my mattress while still wearing my boots.
Initially, all I experienced was fury, then total embarrassment, followed by that awful, familiar sense of being the fool in a joke that everyone else understood way before I did.
Yet beneath all of those feelings lay something far worse.
Heartbreak. Because at some point during our time together, I had truly started to think I was as important to Mrs. Higgins as she was to me.
I was raised in the system, so maybe I should have been smarter about this.
My mom walked out on me right after my birth, and my dad was locked up in jail.
I found out very young that grown-ups could say anything they wanted and mean absolutely zero. I found out how to pack bags quickly, how to keep my main items together, and how to hide my tears from random people if I had the choice.
Once I grew too old for the system, I walked out carrying two plastic bags packed with outfits and zero ideas for my future.
I landed in this city simply because the apartments were cheap and nobody snooped around.
I pushed through a few awful gigs with even worse managers just so I could survive.
Then I landed a spot at Bo’s Diner. I enjoyed the work instantly.
Bo brought me on simply because a server walked out right during the busy morning shift, and I just so happened to stroll inside to ask for a gig.
He checked me out from head to toe and asked, “Have you ever balanced three meals at the same time?”
I answered, “Nope.”
He gave a shrug. “You have ten minutes to figure it out.”
That was Bo — straightforward, tough-looking, shaped like a brick wall, yet somehow one of the kindest guys I had ever crossed paths with.
When my crazy shifts wrapped up, he would slide a sandwich and potatoes toward me and order, “Chow down before you faint and cause me a bunch of paperwork.”
Occasionally after locking up, I hung around and scrubbed the tables while he whined about delivery guys, grocery prices, busted fridges, and customers who wanted their meals cooked “medium-medium-well.”
Mrs. Higgins walked through the doors every single Tuesday and Thursday morning right at eight.
The initial time I served her table, she squinted hard at my shirt tag.
“Lucas,” she spoke. “You appear exhausted enough to face-plant right into my breakfast.”
“It has been a rough week.”
She let out a laugh. “Try living to be 85.”
That was our very first chat.
From that day on, she constantly requested my section.
“Do you ever grin, kid?” she questioned one day.
“Now and then.”
“I highly doubt it.”
Another day, she commented, “Your haircut gets uglier every single time I bump into you.”
“A great morning to you as well.”
“Hm. That is better. You actually seem somewhat awake this morning.”
She was stubborn in a manner that seemed kind of fun once you grew accustomed to it. I never witnessed her act super nice, but she always noticed things. That matters way more than folks realize.
One day, I was lugging a few shopping bags back to my place when she shouted out to me from past her yard.
“Do you stay close by, Lucas?”
I paused. “A few doors away.”
She stared at me closely. “Hmm. Would you like to earn some good cash, kid?”
I completely froze. “Doing what exactly?”
She pulled her front door open and waved for me to come. “Come assist me. We will figure out a rate. I will lay it all out while we have a hot drink.”
Indoors, she poured me a drink that tasted like hot grass and got right down to business.
“I am passing away,” she stated.
I coughed on my drink.
“Oh, do not act so shocked! I am 85, not a child. The physician thinks I have a few years, perhaps fewer. I require support. Shopping, pills, driving, and tiny house fixes. I do not have a single dependable person around.”
“And for doing that?”
She stared at me for a moment. “Once I am dead, whatever is mine will be yours. I will give you everything.”
“Are you being serious, Mrs. Higgins? You hardly even know who I am.”
“I know plenty.”
It seemed insane. It most likely was. But I was desperate for the cash, and a small part of me truly wanted to trust her words.
So I reached my hand forward and replied, “Agreed.”
At the start, it went exactly the way she claimed it would go. I took her to medical checks, grabbed her food items, and organized her medication into little plastic boxes marked with the days.
I repaired a broken door piece, cleared out the roof pipes, swapped out lamps, and dragged her bins to the curb.
She whined the entire time
“You are running behind.”
“It has only been four minutes.”
“That is still running behind.”
