One year after the settlement, in the spring, the garden bloomed. My mother had planted hundreds of bulbs, and they all came up, and the garden was full of tulips and daffodils and hyacinths, and people drove by and slowed down to look at it. My mother spent every morning out there, weeding and watering and cutting flowers to bring inside. The house was full of flowers. Every room had a vase. It was the most beautiful the house had ever been.
I had been managing the trust for six months. It was not an easy job. The estate was complicated, and there were still documents to review and accounts to reconcile and decisions to make. But it was my job, and I was good at it. I had spent thirty-one years learning how to manage people and money and crises, and now I was finally managing something t
