That evening, my phone rang. Raymond again.
“Have you lost your mind?!” he snapped when I told him about the marriage. “Marrying a dying man you barely know?!”
“Take your time.”
“I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you,” I said quietly.
“Nancy, listen to me. You’re being manipulated. Some stranger sees an old nurse with a pension and dangles a sob story, and you fall for it? Annul it! Today!”
“No, I won’t.”
“You foolish woman! You don’t understand what you’re doing!”
I hung up.
“You’re being manipulated.”
***
A month later, Thomas was gone.
He passed in the early morning, peaceful, with my hand in his. The grief hit me harder than I expected, considering we’d only had a handful of weeks. But sometimes a handful of weeks can hold almost six decades within them.
The funeral was small. I stood by the grave and let myself cry.
Raymond showed up, of course.
He waited until the others had drifted toward their cars before he approached.
Thomas was gone.
“You know I’m your only living relative,” he said, adjusting his tie. “Family should handle family. Foolish old women shouldn’t sign papers they don’t understand, Nancy.”
“I understood every word Thomas said to me.”
He gave me a thin smile. “I helped Aunt Margaret with everything at the end. Everything. She was grateful.”
Something cold moved through me. I remembered how Thomas’s jaw had tightened whenever Raymond’s name came up.
“Family should handle family.”
“I need to go home, Raymond.”
“We’ll talk soon,” he said. “About your affairs.”
I walked to my car without answering.
***
The following morning, someone knocked on my door.
I opened it to find Walter holding a small wooden box under his arm. He gave me the same quiet smile he’d worn at the wedding.
“We’ll talk soon.”
“May I come in?”
I stepped aside. He set the box on my living room table and folded his hands.
“Thomas asked me to deliver this the day after his funeral. Not before. I’ve also sent Raymond a formal letter this morning, notifying him, as your next of kin, that your affairs are under a trust. He’ll have it by noon.”
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“What?” I asked.
Walter smiled. “Thomas was right. You finally walked right into his trap.”
“May I come in?”
I sat. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Walter drew a folded page from his jacket pocket. “Thomas left instructions I’m to read exactly as he wrote them.”
The lawyer smoothed the page and read gently, in a voice not quite his own.
“‘My darling Nancy, forgive me, but I set a trap, and you were never meant to be the one caught in it.'”
My breath caught. I gripped the edge of the table.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
Walter looked up.
“Those papers you signed at the wedding did more than accept what Thomas left you. One was a new will naming a discretionary trust I administer, funded entirely by Thomas’s estate for your support. Another was a durable power of attorney. You named me, not Raymond, to speak for your affairs if you ever couldn’t.”
The lawyer cleared his throat before continuing.
“One was a new will.”
“And the third was your acceptance of the trust’s terms. Raymond cannot pressure you into signing anything binding again, Nancy. Any document touching your money or your care runs through me first, at your request. That was Thomas’s trap. A ring of lawyers around you, so no one like Raymond can ever slide a page under your hand.”
Then he slid the box across the table toward me while my hands shook.
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