“I’m only saying it might be best.

Until we figure out how to manage your living arrangements.”

Your living arrangements.

The phrase went past me in the moment, in all the noise and shock, but it would come back to me that night and keep me awake.

Manage.

As though I were a problem to be administered.

As though, the ink barely dry on a will that left me with nothing, the question of where and how I would be permitted to live had already become something for other people to decide.

And they were deciding it, right over my head.