made my throat close.
“Anna, I knew why you married me.”
I stopped reading.
Richard knew it.
The letter continued.
She wrote that from the beginning she understood that security had been part of the reason I agreed to marry him. He was seventy-three years old, he was no fool.
But then he wrote:
“What mattered to me was why you stayed after you didn’t have to.”
My eyes filled with tears.
During his final weeks, Richard had offered to transfer money in my name.
I refused.
I told him his kids would think I had been waiting for him to die.
He had even asked her to leave the family home to them.
I never knew he had told his lawyer about that conversation.
So I got to the last paragraph.
“My children will inherit my companies, my investments and the house in which they grew up. You never
