I huff. “When I look at him all I can see are all the creamer-less cups of coffee I’ve been drinking since the day I moved in.” And maybe sometimes, just sometimes, I remember that flustered, wonderstruck look he gave me before he knew who I was. Mourn it a little. But who am I kidding? I must have hallucinated it.

“Has he offered to buy you out again?” Sadie asks.

“He doesn’t really acknowledge my existence. Well, except to occasionally stare like I’m some roach infesting his pristine living space. But his lawyer sends me emails with ridiculous buyout offers every other day.” I can see my work building, a hundred feet away. “But I won’t. I’ll keep the one thing Helena left me. And once I’m in a better place financially I’ll just move out. It shouldn’t take too long, a few months at the most. And in the meantime . . .”

“Black coffee?”

I sigh. “In the meantime I drink bitter, disgusting coffee.”

Three

Five months, one week ago

Dear Helena,

This is weird.

Is this weird?

This is probably weird.

I mean, you’re dead. And I’m here, writing you a letter. When I’m not even sure I believe in the afterlife. Truth be told, I stopped pondering eschatological matters in high school because they got me anxious and made me break out in hives under my left armpit (never the right; what’s up with that?). And it’s not like I’m ever going to figure out a mystery that eluded great thinkers like Foucault or Derrida or that unspellable German dude with bushy sideburns and syphilis.

But I digress.

You’ve been gone for over a month, and things are same old, same old. Humanity is still in the clutches of capitalist cabals; we have yet to figure out a way to slow down the impending catastrophe that is anthropogenic climate change; I wear my “Save the Bees & Tax the Rich” T-shirt whenever I go for a run. The usual. I do love the work I’m doing at the EPA (thank you so much for that rec letter, by the way; I’m very grateful you didn’t mention that time you bailed Sadie, Hannah, and me out of jail after that anti-dam protest. The U.S. government would not have liked that one). There is the small issue that I’m the only woman in a team of six, and that the dudes I work with seem to believe that my squishy female brain is unable to grasp sophisticated concepts like . . . the sphericity of Earth, I guess? The other day Sean, my team leader, spent thirty minutes explaining the contents of my own dissertation to me. I had very vivid fantasies about clocking him in the head and tiling his cadaver under my bathtub, but you probably already know all of this. You probably just sit around on a cloud all day being omniscient. Eating Triscuits. Occasionally playing the harp. You lazy bum.

I think the reason I’m writing this letter that you will never, ever read is that I wish I could talk to you. If my life were a movie, I’d trudge to your tombstone and bare my heart while a public-domain symphony in D minor plays in the background. But you were buried in California (inconvenient, much?), which makes letter writing the only feasible option.

All of this is to say: First, I miss you. A lot. A fucking huge lot. How could you leave me here without you? Shame, Helena. Shame.

Second: I am so, so grateful you left me this home. It’s the best, coziest place I’ve ever lived in, hands down. I’ve been spending my weekends reading in the sunroom. Honestly, I never thought I’d set foot in a house with a foyer without being escorted off the premises by security. I just . . . I’ve never had a place that was mine before. A place that’s going to be there no matter what. A safe harbor, if you will. I feel your presence when I’m home, even if the last time you set foot here was probably in the ’70s on your way back from a women’s liberation march. And don’t worry, I fondly remember your hatred of cheesy and I can almost hear you say, Cut this shit out. So I will.

Third, and this is less of a statement and more of a question: Would you mind it if I killed your nephew? Because I am very close to it. Like—sooo close. I am basically stabbing him with a potato peeler as we speak. Though it occurs to me now that maybe it’s exactly what you wanted. You never mentioned Liam in all the years I knew you, after all. And he does work for a company whose main product is greenhouse gases, so maybe you hated him? Maybe our entire friendship was a long con that you knew would end in me pouring brake fluid in the tea of your least favorite relative. In which case, well done. And I hate you.

I could give a comprehensive list of his horribleness (I curate one in my Notes app) but I like to inflict it upon Sadie and Hannah via Zoom. I just . . . I guess I wish I understood why you put me in the path of one of the asswipiest asswipes in the country. In the world. In the entire damn Milky Way. Just the way he looks at me—the way he doesn’t look at me. He clearly thinks he’s above me, and—