Greer JUNE 17, 2016

THINGS WITH AMELIA DIDN’T GO exactly as I had planned. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess I thought she would jump up and down, throw caution to the wind, be absolutely thrilled. But she wasn’t.

She said, “Why don’t you just tell them you can’t do it?”

I had scoffed at that. I was here because I was pretty sure she understood me better than most people. But if she had really known me at all, she would have known that I would never say I couldn’t do something. Even this. Even now. I knew I shouldn’t have put it off. I knew I should have dealt with it sooner, but even though I knew logically that I was dying, I don’t think I had quite accepted it yet, and now I was running out of time.

“But I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone,” she repeated again slowly.

“People do it all the time,” I reiterated.

“Do they?”

I mean, yeah. Maybe not exactly like this. But I have to think it happens.

That was when I handed her the check.

Her eyes got wide. I had the feeling that she had never held a check that big before. I hadn’t, either, so I understood how she felt. She shook her head. “This is yours.”

I tried to explain that I would just endorse it over to her. She looked at me blankly. Now I’m worried. What if Amelia was right? Maybe I should have just said no to begin with… Maybe I should just say no now. But I have so much left in me, so much to pass on.

Greer’s Golden Goodness. That’s what the readers nicknamed my column. Because everything I touch turns to gold. I believed it once, I really did. I was the king maker. I wore the crown. I started to think, like they did, that everyone I touched turned to gold, too. Now, as I stood with Amelia, asking a total stranger for the biggest favor I would ask anyone, I reached out to take her hand. To touch her, a last attempt to hope that she, that this project, would turn to gold.

My legacy, my secrets, my future, all placed on this one woman. Could I trust her? Could she trust me? She squeezed my hand. She nodded. And that’s when I knew.