At 92, I was a widowed department store owner with more money than family and no idea who deserved any of it. So I walked into my own store disguised as a homeless woman to see how people treated me—and right when the disgust and stares were getting unbearable, someone suddenly tackled me from behind.
I never thought I’d live to be 92.
By then, everyone I loved was gone.
My husband. My children.
My sisters and brothers.
Cancer took some. Accidents took others. Time finished the job.
What I had left was money.
A lot of it.
And the department store I’d built from nothing when I was 42.
Four floors. A café. Perfume counters.
Fancy brands I couldn’t even pronounce.
My name was on the building.
My blood was in the walls.
But I had no heir.
No one I trusted. No one whose heart I believed in.
I didn’t want the fortune going to random lawyers’ choices or some distant cousin waiting like a vulture.
So I decided on something… strange.
I would pretend to be homeless in my own store.
If people thought I was nothing, how would they treat me?
That, I decided, was the truth I needed.
So one cold morning, I opened my old cedar trunk and started creating my disguise.
I found an ancient coat, tore one sleeve, stitched clumsy patches, rubbed it in dirt. I picked shoes with worn soles and a hole in the toe.
I smeared ash on my cheeks, tangled my white hair, and skipped my usual lipstick for the first time in 70 years.
In the mirror, I barely recognized myself.
“Old fool,” I muttered.
“Let’s see what they do when they can’t smell your money.”
I grabbed my cane and headed to the store.
The sliding doors opened with their usual soft whoosh.
Warm air and the smell of coffee and perfume washed over me.
I shuffled in, hunched and slow.
Heads turned.
It happened almost immediately.
A woman in a designer coat wrinkled her nose. She grabbed her bag tighter like I might bite it.
Thing.
I kept walking.
A man stepped aside dramatically.
“Does she belong in here?” he muttered. “Absolutely disgusting.”
A teenager pointed his phone at me.
“Look at this,” he snickered to his friend.
“We got a street zombie.”
I pretended to study a display of scarves, my fingers shaking.
It hurt more than it should have.
I’d spent decades giving to shelters, hiring people who needed second chances, insisting on kindness as a policy.
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