PART 3 – For Almost Two Years I Had Known Nothing About the Trust, and the Lawyer’s Questions Made That Silence Impossible to Ignore

I used to think ignorance meant having nothing to worry about.

I don't think that anymore.

The lawyer's questions had made me aware of something I couldn't undo.

There was information about my grandmother that I hadn't been given.

Or at least information that had never reached me.

I didn't yet know why.

That distinction mattered, even when I was frightened.

I kept thinking about the word trust.

It sounded formal.

Distant.

Like something meant for lawyers and accountants, not for a person still trying to understand why she was being contacted nearly two years after a death.

But the lawyer had spoken about it as something connected to me.

Otherwise, why ask whether I had received the documents?

That seemed reasonable.

Yet reasonable wasn't the same as proven.

I needed him to explain the connection.

I also needed to know whether the trust had anything to do with the events surrounding my grandmother's death.

He hadn't said.

So I couldn't assume it did.

That was the difficulty with having only part of a conversation to hold on to.

Every unanswered question invited another.

I wondered what my grandmother had wanted.

I wondered whether those wishes had been written down.

I wondered why I had never heard anything about them.

Then I stopped myself.

I didn't know the terms of the trust.

I didn't know who was named in it.

I didn't know whether it contained money, property, instructions, or some combination of those things.

The title of a legal arrangement didn't tell me its contents.

And I had no right to turn uncertainty into a story simply because the uncertainty frightened me.

Still, it was hard not to think about what might have happened.

Two years was a long time to go without knowing something important.

I thought about that number.

Almost two.

Not a few days.

Not a couple of weeks.

Nearly two years.

I had carried on believing the matters surrounding my grandmother's death were settled.

And now a stranger was asking me questions that suggested there might be something unresolved.

The feeling was difficult to name.

At first, it seemed like confusion.

Then disbelief.

Finally, I admitted that I was afraid.

Afraid I had missed something I should have known.

Afraid that information had been withheld.

Afraid that whatever the lawyer wanted to discuss would change the way I understood those two years.

There was another feeling underneath the fear.

Shame.

I had accepted not knowing.

I had treated the lack of information as normal because nobody had told me otherwise.

But I couldn't fairly blame myself for not knowing that a trust existed.

I could only decide what to do with that knowledge now.

I went over the lawyer's questions once more.

He hadn't asked whether I wanted to learn about a trust.

He had asked whether I had already been contacted about one.

I couldn't forget that difference.

It suggested a process that might have begun before our conversation.

Whether that process had worked was another question.

I wondered whether a letter had been prepared.

Whether it had been mailed.

Whether a delivery had failed.

Whether someone had received it.

I had no answers.

I knew how easily those possibilities could become accusations.

And I didn't want to accuse anyone without evidence.

My sister's name came into my thoughts because she was my sister.

We were family.

But the lawyer had not named her.

He had not accused her of touching any correspondence.

He had not said she knew anything about the trust.

I couldn't honestly put her into the missing parts of the story.

Not yet.

The same was true of everyone else.

My husband.

Other relatives.

Anyone who might have known my grandmother.

None of their roles in the trust had been established by the call.

I needed to remember that.

I had already learned one uncomfortable lesson.

When you don't have enough facts, your mind will offer you a thousand explanations.

Most of them will feel convincing.

That doesn't make them true.

I wanted to hear the lawyer explain what he knew without my guesses getting in the way.

I wanted to see what he was referring to.

A document.

A dated notice.

A record of correspondence.

Anything that could be checked.

I wasn't interested in a family argument built on suspicion.

I wanted the facts.

If an administrative mistake had occurred, I wanted to know that.

If the letter had been returned, I wanted to know that too.

And if there was another reason I had never heard about the trust, I wanted that reason explained.

I didn't know whether it would be simple.

I didn't know whether it would hurt.

I only knew I could no longer accept silence as an answer.

I thought about the last part of the conversation.

The lawyer had exhaled after I confirmed that no certified letter had reached me.

A small sound.

Hardly anything.

Yet I remembered it more clearly than many of his words.

Because it was the only indication that my answer had surprised him.

I didn't know what he was thinking.

I couldn't pretend I did.

But I knew what I was thinking.

If there was a record of a letter, I needed to see it.

If the trust concerned me, I needed to understand why.

And if my grandmother had left instructions that affected my life, I needed to hear them from someone who could show me what they actually said.

That was the first decision I could make without inventing anything.

I would stop guessing.

I would ask for the documents.

And I would listen carefully to the answers.

Click here to continue reading: PART 4: Before I Could Understand Grandma’s Final Wishes, I Needed One Answer About the Letters That Had Never Reached Me