Chapter 5 - PETER’S HOUSE My husband Peter and I bought our house in 1989.
A brick colonial on two acres outside Richmond.
Nothing fashionable about it.
We raised Charlotte there.
Peter remodeled the kitchen himself and installed one cabinet door upside down.
We discovered it after the glue set.
He refused to fix it.
“Character.”
He called every mistake character.
By the time he died, the house was worth around six hundred forty thousand dollars and had no mortgage.
Peter also left retirement savings.
Not millions.
After four years of living modestly, my investable assets were approximately five hundred seventy thousand dollars.
Cash savings around ninety thousand.
Social Security.
A small pension from my years as a public-school librarian.
Comfortable.
Not private-island money.
Charlotte would inherit most of what remained.
She knew that.
I had never hidden it.
I also had a durable financial power of attorney naming her as agent if I needed assistance.
That became important after cataract surgery two years earlier.
For several months, Charlotte paid bills.
Talked with insurance.
Helped with online banking.
I thanked her constantly.
When my eyesight improved, I resumed most things myself.
But I never formally revoked the power of attorney.
Why would I?
May you like
She was my daughter.
That sentence would embarrass me later.
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