My husband’s children spent ten years telling everyone I only married him for the house. After his funeral, his lawyer handed me a locked box.
My name is Patricia, and I married my husband, Frank, eleven years ago, three years after his first wife died. His two adult children, Brad and Stephanie, made their feelings about me clear from the very first Thanksgiving.
“She’s only here for the house,” Stephanie said once, not even bothering to lower her voice while I was standing in the next room. Frank’s house, the one he had built with his first wife decades ago, sat on four acres and was worth more than I earned in five years combined.
For eleven years, I heard some version of that line at every family gathering. I stopped correcting them after the third year. It never changed anything.
Frank passed away last month, peacefully, in his sleep, after a long struggle with his heart. At the funeral, Brad and Stephanie stood together beside the casket, accepting condolences, barely acknowledging me except with a stiff nod.
A week later, Frank’s attorney, Mr. Delgado, called and asked me to visit his office alone, without the children there.
I sat across from his desk, and he reached into a drawer and took out a small metal box, secured with an old brass lock.
“Frank came to see me four months before he died,” he said, sliding it across the desk toward me. “He was very clear about how this was handled, and who was permitted to be in the room when you opened it.”
I stared down at the box, my hands hovering just over the lid.
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