"Oh." Relax, self. "I don't...know. I haven't really..." The words trail off, lost in the air all around us, because it isn't his business and I wouldn't know how to explain it. What would he say if he knew I spend most of my days in bed, wanting to sleep and unable to make myself move? I do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Because it's all so much effort.

Harold takes a deep breath. "Vincent. You're legally an adult now. I almost wish you weren't, because I would've taken you in and been able to keep a better eye on you otherwise."

I give him a funny look, but say nothing.

"You haven't had it easy. You've had it pretty shitty, frankly. The day you came home with Maggie, she called me up and told me she wanted to go over her will, so she could leave what little she had to you."

"I don't want to talk about this," I mumble around my straw.

"Something drew Maggie to you. She could be hard to deal with at times, but, God, she loved you to pieces. And if anything ever happened..."

"What's it matter to you?" I do not want to talk about this and it makes my heart hurt because I don't want to be guilted into anything because it's what Maggie would have wanted. She's dead so what the hell is the point?

Harold doesn't look the least bit phased. "Why wouldn't it matter to me?"

"Because you were her lawyer, and she's dead now," I snap. "She's dead, and you can't work for dead people. You can't say goodbye to them, you can't make them proud, you can't live for them. So, again, what's it matter to you? You don't know me."

I start to get up. Harold doesn't try to stop me. Not with physical force, anyway, though what he says stops me in my tracks: "Maggie's son, Allen, was my best friend growing up."

Maggie had a kid. That much I knew. He died overseas ages ago, probably before I was born. I don't even know which war. I've never given him much thought because Maggie never wanted to talk about him when I asked.

"Maggie liked to pretend she was all right." Harold laces his fingers together, studying the spot where I was sitting a moment ago. "She was strong like that. But Allen always told me to keep an eye on his mom when he wasn't around because she got lonely a lot. Didn't do too well on her own. So after he died, I tried to check up on her, you know? Me and my wife both. Just to let her know someone was still around who cared. She had already lost her husband and now she'd lost her kid. She didn't have anyone else." Finally, Harold tilts his head, meeting my eyes before I have the chance to look away. "She told me years later that my family was the only reason she didn't kill herself. Then she brought you home, and she told me that you remind her a lot of herself during that time."