Bad Heiress Day by Allie Pleiter Page B

how I’d have sorted through it without you.”
    Meredith smiled behind her wildly colored reading glasses. “You’d have found a way. But I’m glad you don’t have to.” She slid yet another stack of papers toward Darcy. “Here, sign these three where the Post-it notes are, and that will be the last of them.”
    Darcy signed. “No more after this?”
    “No more from me.” She pulled off her glasses and let them dangle from the beaded chain around her neck. “I’m sure your father’s lawyers will have more to sign once the estate goes through probate, but I have a feeling Paul left no loose ends there.”
    You have no idea, Darcy thought, wondering when she would stop feeling like a walking time bomb of secrets. “Sure” was all she said.
    Meredith pushed back her chair. “Let’s walk back and get Paul’s things.”
    Darcy’s chest tightened. “Walk back? You don’t have them here?” The office was bad enough. She wasn’t ready to walk the residence hallway.
    Meredith was not at all taken aback by the response. “They’re back in the east lounge. Besides,” she said, coming around the desk corner, “Angie’s here and she wanted to see you.”
    Angela Denton. Angie Denton had been a friend of sorts. Her husband Bob moved in a couple of months before Paul got really bad. Angie and Bob were Jack and Darcy’s age. An accomplished couple who’d chosen worldtravel rather than start a family. “Bob’s taking this particular one-way trip without me,” Angie used to quip. If you could call it quipping, for she never could quite get the joke out without choking on it.
    With horror, Darcy realized she hadn’t once checked in on Angie during the weeks since Dad’s death. “Oh, Meredith, I’ve never…”
    “It’s all right.” Meredith stopped her with a hand on Darcy’s arm. “She understands. Really. But I think she’d really like to see you.”
    “Bob?” Darcy almost didn’t want to ask.
    “A few days. Probably not much more. He’s only conscious an hour or so a day now.”
    Darcy’s throat tightened. “Oh…I, Meredith, I’m not sure I can do this.”
    Meredith’s hand tightened supportively around Darcy’s arm. “Yes, you can. You of all people can, because you know what it’s like. She needs to see you, Dar, to know that you can come out of the other side of this.”
    Darcy began to tear up. “I’m not out, I’m not on the other side of this.”
    “All the better not to be in the middle alone. You can just stand in the doorway and cry if that’s as far as you can go. Angie won’t care what you do. Come on. I’ll be right beside you. It will be good for both of you.”
    Darcy felt almost ill as Meredith began to lead her down the hallway. The scent of this building, the particular combination of medical aromas combined with the many homey touches Meredith added, was like no other. Just breathing the air seemed to suck Darcy into a time warp, back to the days when all the days were in here. When lifedivided itself into time at the hospice center, and time waiting for the center to call her.
    With surprise, Darcy discovered that it wasn’t that bad. At just that moment, sucking in a deep breath to steady herself, she realized that she didn’t regret the time spent here. This was a good place. An important place. No, the time in here, with her dad, was not wasted time. Hard time, but not horrible time.
    The wasted time, Darcy realized with a shock of clarity, was the time spent outside of here still thinking of here. It was a good thing to be here with Paul, but it had taken over her life. So much so that the time away from here was still spent constantly thinking about Paul. While she physically left the hospice, she never mentally left the place.
    The door to Bob’s room, just across the hall from where Paul had lived, was left ajar. The room seemed tiny as Darcy peered in. It was like when people go back to their elementary school to visit as an adult. They remember it