I took care of my 85-year-old neighbor for her inheritance, but she left me nothing — then her lawyer knocked the next morning with a dented lunchbox and a key I wasn’t supposed to recognize.

At first, it was exactly what she said it would be. I drove her to appointments, picked up groceries, sorted her pills into little plastic boxes, fixed a cabinet hinge, changed lightbulbs, cleaned gutters, and took out the trash. She complained through all of it.

“You’re late.”

“It’s been four minutes.”

“Still late.”

I would tell her she was impossible, and she would answer.

“Yet you keep coming back.”

Slowly, without either of us naming it, things changed. She started asking me to stay for dinner. Her cooking was terrible, but she acted personally insulted if I said so. Once she made meatloaf so dry I had to drink three glasses of water to swallow it.

“This is awful.”

She pointed her fork at me.