They Called Her Penniless and Left Her to Die Alone. She’d Sewn a Two-Million-Dollar Secret Into the Pillow Beneath Her Head

I’m only that.

And some nights I feel like I just can’t do this anymore.”

I was ashamed of it the moment it left my mouth.

You are not supposed to say such things to a dying woman.

But Fiona did not flinch, and she did not scold me, and she did not pour out comfort I would have to pretend to feel.

She was never a woman of many words; she had spent her life among people and animals and weather that did not require narration.