⸻
I sat in that office for a long time after finishing the letter, Grace and Nolan quiet beside me, Desmond giving all three of us the space the moment clearly required before continuing with the formal signatures.
⸻
“Did you know?” I finally asked Grace. “About the diagnosis. About all of it.”
⸻
“We knew about the cancer,” Grace said. “We didn’t know he’d broken up with you because of it, not until he explained it to us himself, a few months before the end. He felt terrible about it, Adrienne. He talked about calling you more times than I can count. He never let himself actually do it.”
⸻
“Why not?” I asked.
“I think,” Nolan said quietly, “once he’d already made the decision to protect you from watching him get sick, going back on it felt like it would undo the only thing he thought he’d actually managed to do right in the whole situation.”
⸻
I signed the attestation that afternoon, formally accepting the inheritance Foster had left me, watching Grace and Nolan sign their own portions immediately afterward, the entire estate finally released from the careful, deliberate lock Foster had built around all three of our names together.
⸻
I used the money exactly the way Foster asked. I enrolled in my graduate program the following semester, finishing the degree I’d set aside years earlier, carrying his letter folded inside my course textbook through every single exam that first difficult year back.
