It is also, as I was about to learn, a dangerous thing to believe, because it leaves you unguarded, convinced that the people gathering around your grief must be there out of love, since surely no one would be cruel enough to come for a woman who had already lost so much.

Someone would.

Someone did.

Chapter 8 — The Waiting Room

The day came when Mr.

Bradley, Lawrence’s attorney of many years, asked the whole family to gather at his downtown office for the formal reading of the will.

The waiting room smelled faintly of old paper and furniture polish.

I sat with my leather purse gripped in my lap and listened to my grown children murmuring my name out in the hallway, talking in the low tones people use when they are discussing a delicate matter and do not want the subject of it to hear.