They kept me out of their cottage for 4 years because of “mold”—after they died, the lawyer handed me a key… and that door made me freeze.

I drove the question home with me that night.

You’ll understand when you get there.

Those words kept circling through my mind the way a song gets stuck—shapeless, persistent.

What was there to understand? That the mold had been worse than she let on? That she’d been embarrassed by the state of the place?

I had raised her in a three-bedroom bungalow with a cracked bathroom tile for nine years before I had the money to fix it. She knew I didn’t care about imperfection.