Susan was sweet, but in her brother’s eyes she was an emotional fool who defended a strange woman with a sad story. He scoffed at her until a few days after the old lady’s death a lawyer showed up at Susan’s house.
Bill and Susan were siblings, living in two different worlds.
Bill was 32 years old and his construction business brought him enough money to have the biggest house on the block and two cars in the garage. The man lived alone, but he believed that family was a life free of stress and emotional drama.
And Bill scoffed at nothing more than emotionally gullible people. “Like my own sister!” – he thought.
Susan was 28, had three little children, and could only afford a small, old house on the same block. The three children were her stepchildren from her husband Dave’s first marriage.
When Dave was tragically killed in an accident, Susan was determined to raise them to be good young people. She wanted them to have a comfortable life, even if that meant working around the clock. And she worked – all day, every day.
If she hadn’t married that poor nice man, or if she hadn’t been the only childminder, Susan could have had a well-off life too. But she had nothing to complain about, because in her eyes children had always been a gift from heaven – a belief her brother scoffed at.
One day Susan was returning from the grocery shop when she saw an unfamiliar woman who immediately caught her attention.
It was an elderly woman sitting on a bench in front of the shop, her arms around her body, her lips trembling uncontrollably with cold. The woman swayed back and forth, trying to keep warm, though she didn’t have enough warm clothes.
The strange old woman did not wait for anyone, did not ask for anything, and there was a look of despair and hopelessness on her face.
“It’s cold today,” Susan approached the older woman and said in a quiet voice, “Here, put this jacket on and let me get you some coffee in the meantime.”
The woman was confused but reached for the jacket and couldn’t wait to put it on. “Are people still helping strangers these days?” – she wondered as she watched Susan bring her coffee from a nearby kiosk.
While the poor woman enjoyed each sip of coffee with a sigh of relief, Susan sat down next to her to keep her company.
“Is there somewhere you can go back to?” – she asked the woman.
“Yes, but I won’t go there, even if I am forced to!” – The poor woman’s voice suddenly became loud and angry.
The elderly woman, Anna, said that she had escaped from an old dingy nursing home where she had been forced to live by her adult sons.
“One day they made me sign some papers. Then a week later I found out they had sold the house – MY house – and split the money amongst themselves. Heartless creatures! They packed a bag and took me to a nursing home, trying to emotionally blackmail me into living in this shithole!”
Susan held out a handkerchief to the woman to wipe away her warm tears.
“I gathered all the strength I had and left, promising myself never to go back. Not to the nursing home, not to the children!”.
Susan continued to listen to Anna and realised she had nowhere else to go. After thinking for a while, Susan interrupted the elderly woman’s emotional tirade.
” Look, why don’t you come to my place? I have a modest house within walking distance of here. I have three adorable children who would love to meet a grandmother like you… I know it sounds strange, but think about it,” she suggested to Anna.
Anna hesitated and said: “You seem like a good woman, and I know your children can’t be any different… but how long can I…”.
” You can stay as long as you like, Anna. But at least until you recover from this terrible rash…”, Susan took the woman’s hands.
Anna got on very well with the children. They never stopped fussing around her, asking for another fascinating story and teaching them another game from her childhood.
And Anna was always happy to help. Her childhood joy and hope returned to her heart, and her life began to seem full again.
A few days turned into a few weeks, and no one thought of Anna as a stranger who could leave at any moment. Nobody, except Bill.
“Why are you even interested in that old pain in the arse? You’re young and she’s just a chatty old woman. A crackpot who wants to get everything for free!”, Bill tried to shake the kindness out of Susan.
“Have some respect, Bill. She’s welcome here. She’s been abandoned by her children and needs a family!”
“You’ll never learn!” – Bill said, swiftly leaving the house.
He had never understood the kindness of his sister’s heart, why she had married that poor man years ago, why she continued to take care of children who weren’t really hers, or why she had taken on the extra burden of sheltering an old woman she barely knew.
And when he found out that Anna had died, he didn’t understand why Susan wouldn’t stop crying.
“That’s a relief, I tell you. She was an old woman with a pitiful story, and you still gave her more than she deserved. Oh, the room still smells like her cheap hair oil. Now you’ll have to air the room for months!”
Susan didn’t say a word, but she looked Bill straight in the eye and let him know to stop immediately or leave.
As usual, Bill left instead of being there for his sister and returned only after the shocking rumour had reached him.
“Is it true? Is it her lawyer?” – Bill gasped, running up to his sister’s house.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Main’s lawyer. She rewrote her will a few weeks ago. This nice woman didn’t have any assets left, but she did have an old bank account with some money in it. She left everything to Mrs. Susan…,” he said, smiling politely at the brother and sister.
“How much money?”, Bill nudged his sister to name the amount. “A thousand euros? Five? Ten?”
Bill’s apprehension continued to grow when Susan stopped him.
Finally, she showed him the document. Inside was a cheque for 100,000 euros.
That money meant everything to Susan. It meant she would finally be able to renovate the nursery. It meant she would finally be able to hire a permanent nanny and possibly rent a car.
It turned out that Anna had originally bequeathed the money to her sons. But after discovering what a real family was like in Susan’s house, she forced a change of will.
Anna’s sons were as shocked as Bill, who watched Susan do everything she promised to do with the money and noticed that their lives were improving.
The children’s new room was beautiful and bright, and in the centre of one of the walls hung a portrait of Anna, the woman who had changed their lives with her presence.
