In the weeks that followed, the story spread the way such stories always do in small towns: half gossip, half warning. At the pharmacy, people lowered their voices when they saw me, as if my presence proved something uncomfortable about what love and duty really cost. The detective called twice more; the DA called once. Each time, they had another layer of proof—email trails, bank transfers, a notary suddenly eager to talk. Each time, I felt less like a witness and more like an accomplice to Margaret’s long, deliberate act of faith in me. She had counted on their greed, their entitlement, the way they’d always treated her care as something owed, not given. She had also counted on my steadiness, the same steadiness that had held morphine syringes and trembling hands, now holding a pen as I signed statements and affidavits. When the trial date was set, I ironed the same black dress I’d worn to her funeral and realized, with a start, that this time I wasn’t attending as the help. I was walking into a room where my name, my work, my loss were written in the record, impossible to eras… Continues…