“It was sort of a mutual thing. But I was wondering—”
“As a matter of fact, I have exactly what you want.” Susan invited him inside. She came down the stairs a minute later. “Here, catch.” She tossed him a black velvet box.
Connor popped it open. “An engagement ring?”
“My sod of an ex-fiancé never asked for it back. I figure it was his way of getting over his guilt for dumping me. Whatever. Elly and I spent many hours thinking of ways to destroy it, like taping it to the Nankai tracks and letting the train squash it flat. But I thought better of it.”
“It fits her?”
“She tried it on once, you know, to see what it was like. Believe me, Connor, girls want the ring. And I want that one back, so don’t lose it. I plan on trading it in on a washer/dryer set someday.”
“Thanks,” Connor said. “I won’t.”
He walked over to Sandra’s condo. Yvonne Maynes answered the door. “We’re almost done.”
From the living room, Connor could see Carol and Sandra at the kitchen table. Elly had her back to him. She must have heard him come in. She glanced back over her shoulder and smiled. He flushed in response, despite himself.
“That was quite the look you gave me back there,” she observed as they were walking home. “What exactly was on your mind?”
“I thought: right there is the most beautiful woman in the world, and she actually likes me.”
“I love you, silly.”
“That too.”
The rain let up. They stayed to the sidewalks to keep their shoes from getting soaked. Elly stopped, tugging on his hand. “I bet that’s what my mom told you.” He hesitated, caught in a moment of ethical conflict. Elly laughed. “I understand. A mother-in-law’s orders must be respected.”
They continued up the street. Connor added, his voice soft and even, “The words don’t always matter, Elly.” He used the Japanese proverb, “The flower says nothing (Iwanu ga hana).”
She stopped again. “Silence may be golden (Chinmoku wa kin), but eloquence is silver (Yuuben wa gin).” She smiled. “Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.”
She closed her eyes and listened to the music singing inside her head. “Yes,” she said, “words matter.”
When they got home, the answering machine light was blinking. The first call was from Sandra (Elly had been late to the meeting). The second was from Rose Noland.
“Who?” Connor said.
“The lady who called the other day.”
“This is Rose Noland,” the message went. “I’m calling from Evans &
Thorton. Mr. Thorton wondered if the two of you could come down to our offices tomorrow morning.”
Elly said, “He did say they’d call us back.”
“But still no idea what this is all about?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow.”
Chapter 46
Inheritance
T he storm swept over the mountains during the night leaving in its wake bright, blue skies. It was the first real fall morning, and at nine o’clock the air was still brisk enough to require jackets.
The offices of Evans & Thorton were located in Academy Square on West Center. The directory inside the lobby pointed them to suite 221.
“Hi. I’m Rose,” the receptionist greeted them. “You must be Connor and Elly. Mr. Thorton is expecting you.” She led them down the hallway to his office. “Tom? The McKenzies are here.”
A bespectacled man with a bushy beard looked up from a cluttered desk. He resembled a middle-aged Santa Claus. “Oh, good,” he said with a beaming smile. He said to Connor, “Mr. Evans, my father-in-law, was your grandfather’s attorney for many years. I know he would have liked to see this through to completion himself.”
Connor nodded, though he still had no idea what this was all about.
“Do you have your marriage license?” Mr. Thorton asked.
That was the one unique item Mr. Thorton had asked them to bring, along with their drivers licenses. Elly got the envelope out of her purse.
“Dotting s and crossing t’s,” said Mr. Thorton. “I don’t foresee any problems with probate, but better safe than sorry.” He glanced over the license and their IDs and handed them to Rose. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the two chairs facing the desk.
Rose returned a minute later. She handed the copies to Mr. Thorton and returned the originals to Connor and Elly.
“What exactly is this about?” Connor said.
Mr. Thorton undid the strings binding a maroon accordion legal folder and extracted several documents. He handed Connor a pen and slid the papers across the desk. Connor signed his name on the indicated lines.
“A stipulation in your grandfather’s will,” Mr. Thorton explained. “I was to see that you took legal ownership of the property, along with the contents of this brief—” He tapped the legal folder. “What you do with them after that is your business. Everything should be ready by next Tuesday. Is that okay with you? Around ten? Good.” He shook their hands and bid them goodbye.
Elly said, as they walked back to the car, “That was weird. What did he mean about legal ownership?”
Connor snapped his fingers. “My grandmother’s Ford Taurus. Those papers were the title and registration for a car. When her eyes got too bad for her to drive anymore, the car became the family loaner. The driver-ed car, they called it.”
“So he’s giving you that car? Wow. That’s quite the inheritance.”
“Technically it was my Grandma’s. Maybe it was in her will. A handme-down for the very last grandchild. The Blue Book value can’t be much more than pocket change.”
“Still, it’ll be nice not to have to borrow Aunt Wanda’s car.” They got into the Camry. Elly said, “But you had to get married, first. Who knows what would have become of you if you’d been free to go gallivanting around during your undergraduate days.”
Wanda agreed about the Taurus. “Last I heard, your cousin Joe had the car. Seemed about time to pass it on to a permanent owner.”
“So who was Mr. Evans?” Connor asked.
“Gil Evans was a good man. Your grandfather never had much need or respect for lawyers until he sold the house and set up the living trust. But Gil didn’t run around getting crooks off, and that made him respectable enough in your grandfather’s eyes. Gil died last year. I heard that his son-in-law was running things now. Did he give any indication of when this transaction would be completed?”
“Next Tuesday. There was something about a set of papers that I was to get as well—”
“I cannot begin to imagine,” Aunt Wanda said. “You think you know everything about your parents, and then something like this happens.”
Elly spent Saturday afternoon between general conference sessions grading papers. Connor came downstairs and said he was driving Aunt Wanda to Smith’s Grocery. She said, “Oh, good. Basu-con.”
He nodded and disappeared into the bedroom. A minute later he poked his head out of the bedroom door. “Where do you keep it?”
“Top drawer on the right,” she said, scribbling away in red.
Several minute later, he emerged from the bedroom and headed for the stairs. “Well—?” she said.
He gave her a blank look. “Oh, yeah.” He returned to the bedroom and came out with the prescription.
“What in the world were you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he said, with far too much nonchalance. He went upstairs. She thought he’d left with Wanda, but then came back down carrying a box. “Aren’t you going to the store?”
“In a couple of minutes.”
He took down the Hokusai print, opened the box, got out a slide projector, plugged it in and turned it on. A crooked square of light lit up on the wall. “Aunt Wanda wasn’t sure it worked anymore.” He adjusted the stands until the square of light was even. Then he took a slide out of his T-shirt pocket, slipped it into the carousel and pressed the advance button one frame.
And Ell
y realized what he’d found in the drawer. She leapt out of the chair with a yelp and planted herself in front of the projector lens. “You can’t see that!” She folded her arms resolutely, but soon started to laugh. “I was seventeen at the time. This probably isn’t even legal.”
“I’ll let you know once I get a better look.”
Elly sighed the universal sigh of all women when confronted with the biological realities that make men men. But it had been six years and she was curious. “Okay,” she said, stepping to the side with a dramatic display of reluctance.
A blur of color splashed on the wall. Connor pulled the image into focus. The suddenly familiar pastel of blue and peach reflected back at her: the crystal sparkles of water frozen into brilliant shards of ice, her hair dark and glassy, her skin aglow with sunlight and youth, the smooth arc of her back, the proud rise of her breasts.
“Wow!” Connor said.
Wow was right. When she peeked over her shoulder at him, he reacted a bit sheepishly, and that made her grin. “This is not altogether decent,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but you are so good looking.”
The compliment touched her. “Thanks,” she said.
“Who took it?”
“Becky Hoggan. You remember me telling you about her? The equivalent of your Billy Bragg.”
“She takes a good picture.”
“With my camera, no less. She said there wasn’t any film in it and I believed her. I was horribly mortified at the time. Now I’d like to believe that there was a kid working in the one-hour photo shop at Smith’s and I really made his day.”
“Sure would have made mine.”
“Even educated men have such Cro-Magnon minds. I’m keeping it for when I’m well past my prime.”
“You’ll never be past your prime.” He kissed the back of her neck.
“Oh, I will be, and then you will need some reminding.”
She heard footsteps. “Wanda—!” Elly gasped. Connor fumbled with the switch and then just pulled the plug out.
Wanda knocked on the wall adjacent to the landing. “Are you ready to go, Connor?”
“I sure am,” said Connor.
She leaned forward to look into the room. “Does that slide projector still work?”
“Works just fine.”
“Good.” She cast the two of them a stern look. Elly burst into giggles. Connor looked like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Elly gave him a good-natured shove. “I have homework to correct. You’d better get to the store, unless you want to become a father quicker than we planned.”
After Connor and Aunt Wanda left, she plugged in the projector one last time. She cast her mind back, remembering who she was at that moment, so blithely naïve, so young, not a clue about what life had in store for her. “You see,” she whispered to herself, “it turned out right after all.”
She found another hiding place for the slide. It was one of those objects made all the more valuable by its rarity and inaccessibility.
Chapter 47
Drive
T he subsequent visit to Evans & Thorton proved anticlimactic. “A lot of fuss over a car,” Elly opined.
Mr. Thorton smiled. “My experience is that the more detailed and dispassionate the will, the less the family discord during probate.”
Connor signed the last document. In exchange, Mr. Thorton gave him a Wasatch Auto Storage cardkey and a receipt. “This is yours as well.” He handed Connor the legal folder.
Mr. Thorton shook hands with them. Rose bid them good luck and goodbye.
“Your grandfather sure could keep a secret,” Elly said.
“Runs in the family. My dad used to buy Valentine’s chocolates for my mom, like, the week after Christmas to save money. He’d hide it, then forget where he put it. You never knew when or where a box of chocolates was going to turn up.”
Wasatch Auto Storage was located a block east of the Deseret Industries store at the north end of Provo. A little bell rang above the doorway when they walked in. A man wearing mechanic’s coveralls asked, “Picking up or dropping off?” The nametag over his left pocket identified him as “Boyd.”
“Picking up,” Connor said.
He showed Boyd the receipt. After checking his driver’s license, Boyd went to the filing cabinet and returned with a set of car keys and a release form. “Scotty!” he called out. A kid, maybe eighteen, poked his head into the office from the back room. Boyd, Jr., Elly guessed. “Unlock 23B for these good folks.” He handed Connor the keys. “A lucky man you are, Mr. McKenzie. We’re going to miss her. Your father’s car?”
“Grandfather’s.”
“You must have been his favorite.” He gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
“Yeah,” Connor said, without conviction, “sure.”
Outside, Scotty jumped into an electric utility cart. They followed him through a maze of garages to 23B. Scotty unlocked the padlock and lifted up the garage door.
“There you go,” he said. “We keep the tank topped off to prevent condensation. You can leave the door open when you’re done.” He shook his head and grinned. “Man, I liked that car.” He hopped back into the cart and sped away.
“He liked the car,” Elly echoed.
“There’s no accounting for taste.” Connor tugged the tarp back from the back bumper on the driver’s side. Opposite him, Elly lifted up the cover and they slowly moved down the length of the car.
Connor undid the ties from the front bumpers. They lifted the cover off the hood, stepped to the side, and then walked toward each other, folding the tarp in half. Connor grasped it halfway up from the fold, Elly let go of her end, and he folded it over again.
She turned to look at the car. The sheen of deep, metallic blue flashed across her line of sight. A jolt of recognition coursed through her. She backed up until she was standing in a bright slash of sunlight. The sprinting silver horse gleamed brightly from the grille.
Connor stared at the car, his expression blank. He said nothing for a long time. And then muttered something under his breath in an strained, exasperated tone of voice. He slowly walked to the back of the garage and sat on an upended crate, hugging the car cover to his chest like a pillow.
Connor—” she said again.
He looked at her and said in genuine confusion, “What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Drive it?” she said. She wasn’t trying to be flippant. She saw in his eyes the small boy sitting on the porch steps, torn by love and fear and apprehension. It was so obvious to her that his grandfather would do this, just as it was so obvious that his grandfather would loathe what he saw of himself in the boy. And yet at the same time dream that the boy could become all that he was not. Once upon a time Connor had asked for a glass of water, and now his grandfather had gone and given him Lake Superior instead.
It was so much easier to walk away from the past. But sometimes the past wouldn’t let go.
She said nothing but held him in her arms.
“I’m okay,” he said at last. There was a faucet by the garage door. He splashed water on his face, ran his hands through his hair, and blotted his face dry with the sleeve of his shirt.
Elly said, “Tell me about the car.”
Connor took a step back and surveyed what he saw. “A 1966 Mustang with a 289-cubic inch, 235-horsepower, A-code Challenger Special Veight engine. Four-barrel Autolite 4100 carburetor. Three-speed automatic transmission and front disc brakes. White Pony interior.” He opened the door for her. She got in. He went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. “I used to pretend—” he started to say, putting his hands on the steering wheel. He didn’t finish the sentence. He put the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. The throaty sound resonated off the walls of the garage.
Elly found herself smiling. She could almost smell the testosterone in the exhaust. Her husband really was a closet gearhead. She suddenly felt a whimsical desire to dress up in a leathe
r jacket and a miniskirt. But she got out of the car and said, “You’d better follow me. I don’t want you getting a speeding ticket your first day behind the wheel.”
“Here you go.” He tossed her the keys to the Camry.
“Buckle up,” she said.
Connor parked the Mustang next to the Camry. Aunt Wanda stood on the kitchen steps and marveled. “Where did he hide it?” she asked. “Wasatch Auto Storage.”
“Like your dad’s Valentine’s chocolates. None of us knew what he did
with it. It disappeared a few months before he died. His not wanting to talk about it wasn’t anything new. We assumed he sold it. That explains what he and Mr. Evans were up to.”
Connor folded his arms and shifted his stance. “Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it doesn’t seem fair.”
“That he gave it to you? I wouldn’t worry about that, Connor. The distribution of the estate was as fair as need be.”
“And there was that legal folder,” Elly said.
They sat down at the kitchen table. The bulkiest item in the folder was a book, Chilton’s Ford Mustang/Cougar 1964–73 Repair Manual. Connor said, “I remember this.” In the next divider were the title, registration and inspection papers for the car.
The only thing left was a white 10x12 envelope. Inside was a sheaf of papers and a floppy diskette. The floppy was labeled in his grandfather’s neat engineer’s hand: “McKenzie Temple Ready files.”
“Let me see those,” said Wanda. She stared, laughed, and shook her head in disbelief.
“What?” Elly and Connor asked together.
Wanda said, her eyes brimming, “Leave it to Dad to build himself a back door into heaven. These are his temple papers. That’s why you had to get married first, don’t you see.”
“You don’t have to be married to do temple work,” Elly said.
“True, but that’s not the way my father would have seen it, and getting his temple work done was not his sole intent.” She cast a pointed glance at Connor.
He smiled gamely, the look of a man cornered into doing the right thing, and resigned to doing it because it was the right thing.
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