Chapter 12 - WHAT I DID WITH THE MONEY
Everyone expected me to sell everything.
Ava asked.
Daniel asked.
Even Margaret’s old friends assumed I would liquidate the trust and leave Seattle.
I considered it.
Then I read her letter again.
If holding any of it makes you become Richard, sell it.
If keeping it lets you protect people he would use, keep it.
So I kept most of the trust.
But I changed how it worked.
Independent management.
No family member could pledge trust property personally.
No beneficiary could force distributions through private agreements.
All related-party transactions required external review.
Boring.
Perfect.
I sold one luxury property Richard adored because it carried too much debt and too much ego.
With part of the proceeds, the trust created a tenant-support reserve for the older apartment buildings Margaret originally built her fortune around.
Richard would have called that sentimental.
Margaret probably would have pretended it was merely practical.
The mansion took longer.
For a year, I lived there alone.
Almost alone.
Staff reduced.
Half the rooms closed.
The place echoed.
At night, I would walk through the marble foyer and hear the cane hit the desk again.
Sign it now.
Eventually I realized owning the house did not mean I had to prove I could withstand it.
So I sold it.
A private family bought it.
Three children.
Two dogs.
The mother cried over the curved staircase.
I said nothing about how much misery it had witnessed.
At closing, the agent asked whether I wanted to keep any fixture or furniture.
I kept the black marble desk.
Not because I loved it.
Because I knew exactly what to do with it.
It went into the lobby of a legal-aid nonprofit funded partly by Margaret’s trust.
They wanted a reception desk.
I wanted that particular piece of marble to spend the next hundred years helping frightened people ask for help.
Petty?
May you like
Maybe.
Margaret would have enjoyed it.
