I unrolled the second card. It was a tiny thing, no bigger than a recipe card, and Marians slanted hand ran right up to the edge of the paper.
She wrote, Roland, the third amendment is the one that matters. It is dated July. The lawyers name is Ms. Okonkwo. She has the original. It says that you live in this house for as long as you want, and that when you are gone, the house goes to Wes and Tamsin equally, and not before. It also says one more thing.
I looked up. Tamsin was standing perfectly still by the cookie sheet with her hand on the counter.
I read the rest. Marian wrote, I have left the house to our children because they are ours. But I have set aside a small gift, forty thousand dollars, to start a fund at the hospice in my name. I want Tamsin to run it. I want her to choose which families get a blanket.
Emmett turned to his wife. He said, You told me your mother did not leave you anything.
Tamsin did not answer him. She was looking at the afghan. It was lying across the kitchen island, dark green and gold, a few rows from the end. Marian had been working it for her own daughter.
I had not known that. I had thought it was another one for the hospice. But there was a little tag pinned to the corner, and I read it, because I had not read it before. Made by Marian. For Tamsin, when she needs it.
Tamsin put her hand over her mouth. She said, I thought you gave it away. I thought you did not want to finish it, because it was for me.
I said, Honey, I did not know. I picked it up because it was your mothers.
Every night for forty-one years Marian handed the green yarn to somebody who might be cold, and the last blanket she ever made was the one she made for her own girl.
The strangers had begun to drift toward the door. A couple of them left their cookies on the counter. A realtor named Penny, who had been taking notes, quietly gathered her papers and said she would call about the listing.
Tamsin sat down on a kitchen stool. She said she had taken the money because she was behind on her own bills and could not bring herself to ask. She said she had taken the pearls because she wanted something of her mothers to touch. She said she had put the blanket in a basket because she could not stand to see it unfinished.
I did not scold her. I had spent a lifetime on a river ferry, and I know that people drift off course in a current. I told her she could stay for supper.
She paid back the $9,400 over a year. She returned the Subaru and the pearls the same week. Emmett and Wes drove the car to my house together, and neither said much. The house came off the market. Ms. Okonkwo confirmed the amendment on Monday, and I signed the paperwork as successor trustee.
The blanket is finished now. I do not crochet, so the hospice ladies came on a Tuesday, six of them, and Marians friend Dolores took the hook. She said the last stitch should belong to someone who could not be spared, and she handed the hook to Tamsin.
Tamsin made the last row, slowly, with her tongue between her teeth, exactly the way her mother did. When she tied the knot, she folded the blanket in her lap and started to cry.
It sits in the green chair now. Somebody will be cold tonight. It is not going to be her.