They never planned to become his people. It started with a ride home, then a repaired step, then a roof patched before the first hard rain. Bernard’s trailer, once a sagging box at the edge of town, slowly filled with the smell of shared dinners, the clink of mismatched plates, and the kind of laughter that doesn’t need anything explained. He brought out their softer voices; they brought him chairs at the table instead of apologies at the door.
When the lawyer arrived, grief was already sitting with them, heavy and familiar. The inheritance stunned them, but the zeroes on the page only underlined what had already changed. Bernard had chosen them long before he signed anything. In a world that kept teaching them they were temporary, he left proof in ink and memory that they were, finally, someone’s forever.
