“The deadline is tomorrow,” my mother-in-law said.
“Then you’ll need to cover it, and I’ll reimburse you,” I said.
Silence.
“You know, we don’t have that kind of money available,” she said.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I need a few days.”
I hung up and sat in the quiet of my living room, the living room of the house I had purchased, in the neighborhood I had chosen, with the furniture I had picked out and paid for.
And I made a decision.
Not out of cruelty, not out of anger exactly, though the anger was there underneath, steady and clean.
I made it out of clarity.
Something had come into focus that had been blurred for a very long time.
I called Patricia again the next morning.
I told her I wanted to review everything.
The joint accounts, the house title, the car registrations, the credit cards.
I wanted to understand exactly what was mine, what was ours, and what was his.
I wanted that picture completely clear before I made any further decisions about the funeral or anything else.
She had the summary to me by end of day.
The house was in my name.
I had insisted on that when we bought it, a small instinct I had never fully examined, but had followed anyway.
The joint checking account had about $6,000 in it.
The savings, substantial, accumulated carefully over 10 years, was a solo account in my name.
The credit cards were mine.
Daniel had been an authorized user on two of them, but the accounts were mine.
I read through the summary twice.
Then I removed Daniel’s name from the authorized user accounts.
It took about 4 minutes on the bank’s website.
I sat there waiting for something dramatic to happen, some alarm, some resistance.
There was none, just a confirmation screen, just a change in a database somewhere.
I closed the laptop and went to make coffee.
My brother-in-law called that afternoon, angrier than I had ever heard him.
“She tried to use the card,” he said. “My mother tried to pay a deposit and the card was declined.”
“She’s not an authorized user,” I said.
“She’s been using that card for years.”
“As a courtesy,” I said. “A courtesy that I extended and have now ended.”
“You can’t just—”
He stopped, restarted.
“Daniel just died. You’re doing this right now.”
“I’m protecting my financial assets during a period of legal uncertainty,” I said, which was what Patricia had told me to say. “If your family wants to make funeral arrangements, they’re welcome to use their own funds, and I will contribute what I determine is appropriate once I have a clearer picture of the estate.”
He called me several things after that.
I let him finish.
