So he had done a careful, deliberate thing: he had left her the right to live in the house for the rest of her life, which looked, on paper, like generosity — but he had put the actual deed in a blind trust in my name, so that she could never sell it, never borrow against it, never turn it into cash.

She could live in the fortress.

She could never spend it.

At the time I hadn’t fully understood why he’d structured it that way; it had seemed almost cruel, leaving her a house she couldn’t touch.

I understood now.

He had not been protecting the house from strangers.