Inherit

Mom was always the tough one. She was tough for us, because she had to be. She had six kids and could tell you what each one was doing on Friday night, the 6th of September. That woman made life so easy, it was like every problem you could ever have, she knew the answer. And she knew how you needed to hear it, too.

That Thursday when we all found out she had passed, we weren't too surprised. She had breast cancer for years now and we'd been saying our goodbyes for weeks, but she wasn't exactly strong enough to tell us goodbye back. That's why it was harder on the little ones, they needed her the most. They knew her as the strongest woman in the world, we all did.

I guess that was my job now, being the oldest of the other five. Even though Mark thought he was in charge, since he's the oldest boy, he'd always been mom's favorite and we all knew it hit him the hardest. Gathering all together made it easy for him to distract himself from the truth, and harder for him to process the new world around him.

I knew it was my turn to get everything together. My responsibility to collect her things and talk to lawyers and plan her burial ceremony. It was hard on us all, but eventually we all went through it together.

I brought Mark along to the meeting with the lawyer because I knew we'd be splitting most of her belongings between the other four as they were only in their early twenties and still unable to process this horrible grief. As we walked into the office that day, we spoke openly for the first time since we buried her.

Mark glanced at me as he shut his car door, "Hey August. Thanks for inviting me to help out today. I would've been home crying without something helpful to do."

"I know. I'm glad you're helping me out anyways. Everything's a mess. Nothing is setup correctly. For a woman as organized as her, you'd think she'd have prepared all of this when she found out she was sick."

"Well, hopefully that's what the lawyer will clear up today. We can figure this all out," he consoled as he opened the large glass door for me.

Knowing exactly where I was headed, I walked past the reception desk and into the stairwell to the left. Three flights of stairs later, we arrived at the front desk of Mr. Fredrick's office. We only had to wait 15 minutes before he showed up with a largely filled manila folder containing our mother's life. He brought us back to a large office with glass floor to ceiling windows, and an L-shaped, brown desk that sat behind two typical office chairs.

"Now here's what we have for each of you in cash," he began to explain as he took out the form containing my mother's savings account information, "we have about 20 grand, each."

My brother and I stared at each other in confusion for a few seconds until we looked back at him silently. It was difficult for either of us to say.

I finally spoke up, "I mean, that's a good amount of money. That's just, not what we had planned... We actually know for a fact that my mother has more money than this in her accounts. This is just from one account, how can she not have anything else?"

"Well there was someone else named in the will."

"Excuse me? Who else did my mother name in her will?"

He opened the folder once again and read aloud, "Meredith Willcox."

We looked at each other and could tell neither of us had any idea of what was going on. We didn't know a Meredith, and mom never told us a single thing about a friend with that name. Mark could tell I was getting quite frustrated and confused.

"Please send that to us immediately and get started on a petition, whatever it's called. We don't know who that is, and it's not correct," Mark replied strongly and without hesitation, he gave me the look to leave.

On our way out, I couldn't stop myself from trying to remember every word my mother said leading up to her death. Everything she could've mentioned regarding a name. Nothing was coming easy for me and the thought of hearing her voice in my head pained me. So we headed to her home where we'd been staying the past few weeks, all of us, together.

"I'm going to go to mom's room," I managed to squeak out to the rest of the family.

No one had gone in there since the day she passed. I don't know if we thought it was haunted or if it was just too difficult, but we couldn't get ourselves to go in. Right now, I needed to open that door. I needed to smell her clothes, to be reminded of her, to get lost in the things she once loved.

I laid on her queen sized bed and buried myself in the navy, flannel sheets she had on year round. I only stayed for a few moments because I noticed her closet door was still slightly ajar. It was filled her scent and I couldn't get enough of it. I slammed the closet door shut and took it all in. When I finally left, I sat on her bed to contemplate what she would've been thinking if she were here. And like she was leading me to it, I found a small black book in her nightstand table.

We had no idea she kept a journal. It felt like I found my mom, alive and well. Her words were new and moving and I could see her life on a page. What she was thinking was now in my hands. I opened to the last page she had written on. It was months ago, which seemed to be about right before she fell seriously ill. She talked about her phone calls with each of us that day. It was a rare day that she was able to speak to us all within hours and how she was so happy she actually made herself dinner. She rarely did when she was sick.

Mark suddenly walked in behind me, and I noticed but couldn't let myself look away from the words of the woman who raised me. He sauntered over to the bed and sat beside me. Interested in what I had to say, in what I was reading, and in why I was reading it.

I finally looked at him, "Mom's journal."

"Ah. I didn't know she kept one," he smiled reminiscently.

"Me either. Did you know she was trying to get a day nurse?" I asked puzzled by what I just finished reading.

"A day nurse?" He now grabbed the book out of my hands to see for himself, as if I would've lied to him about something so trivial.

"Yeah, she talks about nurses in her last entry."

"Strange. I wonder if she ever got one," he placed the book gently back in my lap and dropped his head onto my shoulder.

Still focused on the fact that she didn't tell us much of any of this, I stood to look into her bathroom. I wondered if there wasn't something else we were missing here. I looked through all of her laundry that lay on the bathroom floor and picked them up to place them in her basket. I started rummaging through the medicine cabinet. One by one, I picked them up and threw them behind me. I couldn't stop looking at each one. She seemed to have a hundred of them piling up on top of each other.

More and more aggressively, I threw them over my shoulder, waiting to find what I was looking for. I couldn't find it. Mark chased into the room and stared at the mess I was making.

"What are you doing?!" He screamed at me.

"I can't find it," I whimpered as I collapsed to the floor, tears streaming down my face but feeling completely numb, "her name. It isn't on a single one."

Mark stared at me in shock. Forcing himself to move, he picked up a single, empty pill bottle on the tile floor and turned the label toward him.

"Meredith."