My Kids Said I Needed to Stop Calling Them, So I Called My Lawyer Instead – Middle Aged Club

“No.”

“I noticed when we came in.”

“I know you did.”

She handed me a cup to dry.

“Can it go back up?” she said.

I thought about this honestly.

“Ask me in July,” I said.

She nodded. She did not push it, which was the right instinct and which gave me more information

about her current state of mind than the words themselves.

We stayed for dinner.

This was not the plan I had made when I opened the gate, but it was what happened, because the grandchildren were hungry and it was already past four and the situation in the kitchen had

become something other than what it had been when they arrived. I made pasta, which required no planning and which the grandchildren ate without complaint. The youngest helped tear the

bread, which she considered her most important contribution and which I agreed with entirely.

After dinner, Michael found me in the back hallway where I keep the coats.

He stood there for a moment, too large for the hallway the way he had always been, having gotten Richard’s height and then five additional inches from somewhere that remained a family mystery.

“I’m going to call you,” he said. “Regularly. Not because of the will.”

“I know you believe that right now,” I said.

“I mean it.”

“I know you mean it right now,” I said. “I’m not being cynical. I’m just telling you that meaning it in December and doing it in March are different things. I’ll believe it when I see the March calls.”

He absorbed this.

“Fair enough,” he said.

“Also,” I said, “the gate code is not going back to what it was. There is a new code. I’ll give it to you when you leave.”

He blinked.

“Why not the old one?”

“Because I changed the old one,” I said, “and the new one is mine to give, not yours to assume. That’s the difference.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said: “Okay.”

“The security system stays,” I said. “The camera stays. Robert, who you met at the gate, is a

service I have contracted and will continue to contract. This house is mine and I have organized it for my safety and my comfort, and none of that is subject to negotiation.”