The Standing She Did Not Know She Had

My eyes went to the bassinet, to Isla’s small hand slipping loose from the blanket.

“What kind of standing?” I asked.

Rosanna Aldworth paused, and when she spoke again her voice was careful.

“The kind your husband may not know you have.” She told me she would send the folder by courier, first thing, sealed.

And then she told me a little of what was in it, enough that I lay awake the rest of that night not with grief, which I had expected, but with something steadier underneath the grief, something I had not felt in a very long time: the sense of ground under my feet.

My uncle Rutger had been dead almost a year.