Page 109 of Brain Damage

“When I heard about Clark’s arrest…” She shakes her head. “God, I couldn’t believe it. I called your mother and asked when the earliest I could come see you would be. And… here I am.”

Tears spring up in my eyes once more. I had genuinely thought she didn’t want to see me, that she didn’t care about me.

“Oh, please don’t cry again, Charly!” Brigid says. I can see her own eyes are getting misty again too. “I’m going to have the puffiest eyes ever tomorrow!”

I almost laugh. That’s the Brigid I remember.

She sniffles. “Anyway, I feel awful about what Clark did. I mean, I feel like it’s partially my fault.”

“Your fault?” I say.

Brigid nods. “Well, sort of. I mean, I was the one who told you to find the private investigator and get hard evidence that he was cheating. And I was the one who convinced you to hide your assets in those overseas accounts so that Clark wouldn’t be able to get to them in a divorce. But seriously, who knew he was such a sociopath?”

Something that Brigid just said tugs at my memory. It’s that nagging feeling something is there, right on the periphery, but I can’t quite grasp it. I look over at my mother, who is staring at Brigid with wide eyes.

“What bank accounts?” she asks Brigid.

Brigid’s pale skin turns red. “Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe it wasn’t my place to say…”

“Brigid,” my mother says slowly, “do you know something about Charly’s finances?”

Brigid looks at me, as if for permission. I nod, as much for her sake as for mine. I’m still struggling to recapture that memory. I remember walking into a lawyer’s office, something about overseas accounts…

“Charly was concerned that Clark would get all her money if they got divorced,” Brigid says. “So I referred her to our lawyer. He was helping her set up some ways to hide or shelter her money.”

My mother’s eyes are still wide. “How much money are we talking about?”

“Oh gosh, I’m not sure,” Brigid says quickly. “But it was a lot. I mean, a lot a lot. Charly kept talking about donating it all after that patient left it to her in his will, but she never could decide where to donate it. She must have had a premonition that she’d need it someday.”

“Patient?” my mother repeats.

“Yes.” Brigid bobs her head. “What was his name, Charly? Harold something… Brandon?”

“Harold Branham,” I blurt out.

That old man who died of melanoma. The one who had no family. I had forgotten everything, but now it comes back to me like it had never left. The lawyer who called me out of the blue, telling me that my patient had left me his substantial life’s savings. I had been stunned—my first instinct was to refuse the money, saying it should go to a charity. But I thought about my loans, and figured… well, I’d square away my debt and donate the rest. But I never got around to making those donations.

“But how much,” my mother presses Brigid. “Like… ballpark?”

“Two and a half million dollars,” I say.

Mom starts choking on her apple juice. That’s what she gets for abusing the kitchen. “Charly, you remember this?” she manages between coughs.

“I… I guess I do.”

Suddenly, everything seems to make sense. When Clark was trying to get me to sign over my power of attorney, he wasn’t after my meager disability payments or my apartment. He must have found out about the inheritance money I had tucked away, and that’s why he suddenly started visiting me again. He needed me to sign over power of attorney so that he could access it. And then he would’ve disappeared with his girlfriend while I would have been left with nothing. Really nothing.

She shakes her head. “Charly, if you have that kind of money, you realize that you don’t have to… I mean, we’ll have enough to hire help and you wouldn’t have to…”

I won’t have to go to a nursing home. I can live with my mother. This money changes everything. Everything.

Brigid is so shaken by all this that she rips open the box of chocolates that she brought then stuffs one of them in her mouth. Then a second. “I can’t believe you didn’t know,” she says, as she chews through caramel and nuts. “I wish I could’ve told you.”

I do too. It would’ve saved me a lot of grief. Actually, if I had never met Clark in the first place, it would’ve saved me a lot of grief. But that’s life.

At least now I can finally go home.

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