Chapter 10 - THE ROYALTY SALE
The press had once covered Marcus’s patent sale.
Small business journals.
Nothing famous.
Diane used that too.
When convenient:
Elena was secretly rich and selfish.
When borrowing:
Elena was broke and dependent.
Contradictions did not bother Diane because each story served a different audience.
Then Elena finally reviewed Marcus’s last estate memo.
She had avoided it for years.
One paragraph mentioned Diane.
Not cruelly.
Marcus wrote:
Help Diane if you want. But make help measurable. She confuses recurring generosity with permanent entitlement.
Elena stared.
He had seen it.
She had not.
Or had not wanted to.
Then another line:
Do not make the twins responsible for keeping adults comfortable.
At the time the twins had not been born.
Marcus wrote it during Elena’s pregnancy.
She cried.
Then Daniel asked:
“Do you want to keep funding Diane’s health supplement after the cutoff?”
Elena thought.
The agreement did not require it.
But Diane was sixty-one.
Not elderly.
Employed part-time as a fitness instructor before she “retired.”
Capable of purchasing coverage through available options.
Elena decided to fund a transition period of six months.
Not indefinite.
Daniel smiled slightly.
“You’re allowed to be generous.”
“I know.”
“Generosity with a boundary is still generosity.”
That mattered.
Then Diane heard about the six months.
Instead of gratitude, she said:
“So you admit I deserve something.”
Elena closed her eyes.
There would never be a perfect amount that transformed entitlement into gratitude.
So she stopped negotiating emotionally.
The written schedule stood.
Then the biggest financial revelation arrived.
Diane had listed herself as a paid caregiver on a private long-term disability assistance application connected to Elena’s post-crash benefits.
She claimed:
forty hours per week.
She had never been approved for payment because the insurer required verification.
But she had submitted the form.
Elena stared.
May you like
Forty hours?
Diane was rarely there twenty.
