I clicked on the list of “received calls” thinking I may have received a call from this number before. Maybe from one of the phones of Jules and Diane’s friends here?

I did find it, but it had been date-and-time-stamped from the period when I’d just arrived in Hong Kong. I tried to remember who from LA could have called me then.

“Oh!” I exclaimed to myself. “Mrs. Morris!”

Mrs. Morris had been a neighbor of Chris’ brother, Lance. Lance had passed years ago, and he had willed his house to Chris. Unable to decide what to do with the house, Chris had gratefully accepted the neighbor’s offer to take care of the house while Chris thought things over.

Mrs. Morris had been a realtor back in the day while her husband had been in the military, and had been helpful with quickly finding someone to rent the house to. She’d told Chris that before Lance had fallen ill with complications from AIDs, he’d always been helping her around her house, and would check in on her whenever her husband had gone on a business trip in connection with the consultancy assignments he’d occasionally taken upon retiring from the military. So she’d insisted with Chris that she felt it was incumbent upon her to do what she could to help out, “to repay Lance for all his kindness while he was still with us.”

Soon after they’d agreed on the temporary arrangement, Chris had been diagnosed with melanoma, so she’d decided to continue having the house rented out.

And then, I remembered Chris telling me about signing off on the remodeling plans for Lance’s house done by an architect Mrs. Morris had hired. The guy had finalized plans for Lance’s house a week before Chris was diagnosed again with cancer. While permits were being secured, news about Chris’ cancer relapse confirmed our worries, so I’d urged Chris not to think about the house while she waged a battle with the cancer.

The plans were intended to update Lance’s place into a 3-story, glass-walled house. All the houses along the street had been updated over the years, and Mrs. Morris had advised Chris that an updated house that sat on a relatively large lot in this sought-after neighborhood would attract a better price whenever Chris would decide to sell it. Chris had figured she had the funds to cover the remodeling without having to resort to financing the effort.