Chapter 13 - WHY I KEPT THE HOUSE IN TRUST
Mom asked me one evening whether I regretted putting the house into a trust.
“No.”
“Even after all this?”
“Especially after all this.”
She smiled.
“I used to think it meant you didn’t trust me.”
I stared.
“You never told me that.”
“I knew why you did it.”
“That isn’t the same.”
She nodded.
“Your father always said a home should belong to the person living in it.”
“Dad also refinanced three times to buy fishing equipment.”
Mom laughed.
“True.”
Then she became serious.
“I want the paperwork changed.”
My stomach tightened.
“How?”
“When I die, sell it.”
I stared.
“You don’t want Brandon to inherit anything?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“What do you want?”
She had thought about it.
“Half of whatever remains goes to you and Brandon equally.”
“Okay.”
“The other half goes to the nursing scholarship at your old community college.”
I smiled.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“That’s a lot.”
“You bought me a house.”
“You’re not paying me back.”
“I know.”
Her eyes softened.
“That is why I want to give it somewhere else.”
Money enlarges things too.
Fear.
Greed.
But sometimes freedom.
Mom had spent two years being told everything around her belonged to somebody else.
Now she was making decisions again.
I called David Shaw the next morning.
We changed the successor instructions.
May you like
Not because I wanted to control what happened after Mom died.
Because she did.
