When they finally arrived at our modest farmhouse on the outskirts of Milfield, Pennsylvania—the same house where they’d grown up, where Nicholas and I had built Canton Family Orchards from twenty acres of neglected apple trees into one of the most respected organic fruit operations in the state—they didn’t come with comfort. They came with questions about the will.

“Mom, I’m just trying to be practical,” Brandon said, his voice taking on that condescending tone he’d perfected sometime after his first six-figure bonus. We were sitting at the kitchen table, Nicholas asleep upstairs, when he first broached the subject. “The medical bills must be piling up. Have you two considered downsizing? The business can’t be easy for you to manage alone.”

Brandon had left Milfield at eighteen, declaring small-town Pennsylvania as suffocating as the soil that had paid for his education. He’d visited only when absolutely necessary, usually staying in a hotel rather than his childhood bedroom because “the country air aggravates my sinuses.” But suddenly, during his father’s final weeks, he developed a profound interest in the family business that had embarrassed him throughout his adolescence.

Melissa arrived three days later, bringing with her six suitcases and the scent of expensive failure. Five wellness ventures in eight years. Each one launched with her father’s money. Each one abandoned when it required actual work. But she hugged Nicholas with genuine tears and slept beside his bed the night before he passed, which is why I still struggle with what came after.

The funeral was small, just as Nicholas would have wanted. The cemetery sits on a low hillside outside town, overlooking our orchards; the spring blossoms were just beginning to show. I stood between my children as they lowered him into the ground, Brandon’s arms stiff around my shoulders, Melissa openly weeping into a monogrammed handkerchief I’d never seen before.

“He’s at peace now,” the pastor said.