by David Bell
‘About being alone,’ I said. ‘Do you realize my mother died alone? I know she had Ronnie. And she had Paul.’
‘And you.’
I ignored him. ‘She didn’t have friends. She didn’t share her life with anyone.’
‘She was a widow,’ Dan said. ‘Unfortunately, that’s not unusual for someone her age. Especially women.’
‘But she’d always been alone. Few friends. Just her family. My dad was a little better, but he didn’t have much of a life. And now I’m turning into them. If I died today, who would care? If I’d been home when that man broke in here, and he’d put a pillow over my face while I slept, who would care?’
‘Aren’t you being a little dramatic?’ Dan asked. ‘Lots of people would care.’
‘Really care?’ I asked. ‘Really?’
‘I would,’ he said. ‘Remember? I’d miss the sex.’
‘And I’ve cut you out of my life, right?’ I said. ‘Until I needed something? And now Paul, my only family left besides Ronnie. Everything with him is screwed up.’
‘It’s one fight. Families fight.’
‘You’re so logical. And calm.’
‘Somebody has to be.’
I stood up and walked over to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and stared at the beer, but I didn’t take one. I didn’t feel like it just then. I wanted my head to remain clear. It held enough clutter at that moment. I didn’t need to add to it.
I came back to the couch and sat again.
‘I don’t want to die alone,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you’re the only person who feels that way.’
‘But I’m in danger of having it happen to me, right? You’re not. You have a ton of friends. And family. Everybody likes you.’
‘You shouldn’t feel like you’re just turning to me because you’ve had a crisis in your life.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, okay, you should recognize that you’re doing that. After all, we both know you only came by the other night because of the crisis, right? And, really, I’m only here because someone broke in.’
‘Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?’ I asked.
‘What I’m saying is, just because that led you to call me doesn’t mean it isn’t a real change. Sometimes it takes a crisis to drive us in a certain direction. Right?’
I let his words sink in. He looked so calm saying them to me, so rational and smart. So comforting. I felt better. Not a lot better, but better.
‘You’re saying there’s hope for me?’
‘Always,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
Dan looked around the apartment, surveying the work we had done. He nodded his head in satisfaction.
‘I’m glad you have the real lock now,’ he said. ‘That helps.’
‘You don’t think anyone can get through that?’ I asked.
‘No way. Maybe the Incredible Hulk could, but not a petty thief.’
‘Good.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I know you have papers to grade.’
He started to stand up, but before he could get all the way, I reached out and took his hand in mine.
‘You don’t have to run off,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
He eased back down onto the couch. ‘I was hoping you might say that.’ He patted his pocket. ‘I even brought my toothbrush with me.’
23
A knock on the door of the apartment woke us up the next morning. Our bodies were entwined along with the sheets, and it took several moments for me to figure out what the noise was. Then I dug my way out of the tangle.
‘Who’s that?’ Dan asked.
‘I don’t know.’
And I didn’t. No one ever came to my door. Even Girl Scouts selling cookies and Jehovah’s Witnesses peddling salvation didn’t bother to make the trek up the stairs to where I lived. Which helped make the junkie break-in theory all the more implausible to me. I was out of the way. It would take an ambitious junkie to find my door.
I checked my phone. Seven fifty-one a.m. And I had a message.
But the knock came again. First things first. I found a robe and pulled it on.
‘Do you want me to go?’ Dan asked.
He was naked, his skin pale and goosefleshed in the morning chill.
‘If I scream, come out there,’ I said.
‘Do I have to get dressed first?’
‘That’s up to you.’
I trudged through my newly clean apartment to the front door. I looked out the peephole. The morning light was bright and my vision was still blurry from sleep. It took a moment for the figure to resolve into something clear and coherent. When it did, I saw a young guy not much older than me, wearing a coat and tie. His hair looked to be thinning, and he held an envelope in his hand. He looked familiar.
Cop? I thought. No. Doctor? No.
Who else had I been dealing with? Then I remembered – he was from the funeral home. And unless he was going door-to-door to create new business, I was probably safe.
I opened the door. He looked me over from head to toe. The dishevelled hair, bare feet, and robe. His face flushed.
‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I called.’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I always look like this in the morning.’
He held the envelope towards me. ‘This is your mother’s death certificate. I was on my way by here …’
‘Oh.’
I took it from him.
‘You need it to file the will and send the estate into probate. We thought you’d be moving along with those things.’
I hadn’t been, of course. But hearing him say that made me think of the whole list of tasks that needed to be addressed. The will, the house, Mom’s car. I remembered the call from Mom’s lawyer. Clearly other people were eager to move forward as well. Who they were I didn’t know, but it might make sense to start the process.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Was there anything else we can help you with?’ he asked.
He looked so eager to serve, so happy to be doing his job. Not the stereotype of the grim mortician at all. I wanted there to be another task, something else that needed to be done on Mom’s behalf.
‘And we don’t owe you anything?’ I asked.
‘That’s all been taken care of as part of your mother’s preplanning,’ he said.
‘Right. Of course.’
We stood there, the two of us, in the bright morning sunshine. The air was cool. I could feel it on my bare feet.
‘So there’s nothing else?’ he asked.
‘I guess just this,’ I said, holding up the envelope.
‘Your lawyer will take you through all of that,’ he said.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and he took that opportunity to turn and head back down the rickety steps. The formal process of burying and saying good-bye to Mom was basically over. It was time to move on.
Dan needed to leave. He needed to go home and get ready for his Friday classes. When he said he’d brought his toothbrush with him, he was lying. He hadn’t anticipated spending the night at all. I told him about the delivery of the death certificate but not the feelings it evoked inside me. I didn’t have to. Dan read my moods as easily as stepping outside to see whether it was night or day.
‘What would your mom want you to do?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Would she want you to keep delaying things? Or would she want her estate wrapped up as quickly as possible?’
I knew the answer. When Dan was gone, I called the lawyer. Mr Allison had an appointment available that afternoon, after I was done with school.
I agreed to it. Then I got ready and left for campus.
24
I arrived right on time for my four-thirty appointment with the lawyer. The school day had passed uneventfully. I faced my class and told them once again that I didn’t have their essays graded. They grumbled a little, a
nd I realized that the shelf life of students giving their teacher a break because the teacher’s mother had been murdered was getting shorter and shorter. Moving on with the estate business and putting everything to rest would be good, for my own psyche and for my professional career. I couldn’t do much of anything about Ronnie, but I could take care of the things I still had some measure of control over.
Mr Allison’s elderly secretary, her hair pulled into a tight bun, told me to wait, so I sat in an uncomfortable leather chair. I didn’t read any of the magazines or play with my phone. Instead, I watched the secretary at her desk. She looked to be my mother’s age or older, and I silently questioned the universe, asking it why this woman lived while my mother was gone. My anger grew – a slow churning in my chest – and I knew I had started down an unproductive and hurtful mental path. Just to distract myself, I picked up the first magazine I could reach, a copy of Sports Illustrated with a hulking football player on the cover. I flipped through it, past ads to help men with erectile dysfunction and high cholesterol. The phone on the secretary’s desk buzzed, and she stood up and asked me to follow her.
I had never met Mom’s lawyer. I knew that when Dad died everything had gone to Mom. It wasn’t much. The house, the car, and a life insurance policy. Mom kept information about her finances to herself, so I never knew how much the life insurance policy paid out. Mom certainly didn’t change her lifestyle once Dad was gone, so I assumed that the money sat in a bank account somewhere accumulating a safe, steady return.
Frank Allison waited for me just inside his office door. He had a broad face and thinning white hair, which he combed back. His cheeks were a little ruddy, as if he’d just been out in a cold wind, and he wore a white shirt, dark tie, and suspenders. He shook my hand when I came in and offered his condolences while he guided me to a seat. He was over six feet tall and built solidly, and when he sat down behind the desk he let out a little grunt as though the very act of returning his butt to the chair required a lot of effort. The secretary closed the door when she left.
‘I know this is a difficult time,’ Frank Allison said. ‘But you’re smart to get the ball rolling on this.’ He pulled out a pair of rimless glasses and set them on the end of his nose. ‘This death business can be a little like getting nibbled to death by ducks, but my job is to help you get through it.’
‘Thanks.’
‘We’ll get this all square for you in a couple of shakes.’
Before I’d entered his office, I wouldn’t have believed folksiness could be a cure for anything, but just a few minutes in the presence of Frank Allison, and I started to calm down. It didn’t hurt that the wall behind him was covered with pictures of his children and grandchildren and even one of Mr Allison himself in a Santa suit, the beard pulled down to reveal his smiling face.
‘I have a copy of the will,’ I said. ‘It was in among Mom’s personal effects when she died.’
‘Your mother was very practical,’ he said, spreading some papers out on his desk. ‘She didn’t want to burden her children with anything, so she tried to make it easy. You have the death certificate, right?’
I handed it over. Mr Allison studied it, his lips pressed together. He shook his head.
‘I just don’t know where we’re headed when these kinds of things happen,’ he said, tapping the certificate with a big finger. ‘Your mother was a nice lady, very warm.’
He looked up at me and smiled, his lips spreading across his broad face.
‘Thank you,’ I said. No one had ever described my mother as warm, but I knew he was trying to be nice, so I accepted it. Superficial comments were welcome, even encouraged.
Mr Allison lifted a packet of papers backed by a light blue piece of cardboard. ‘Here’s the will,’ he said, handing it over to me. ‘It’s all pretty cut-and-dried. I’ll give you a moment to look it over if you’d like.’
‘I already have one,’ I said, holding up the papers.
‘Oh, that’s right. You did say that.’ He adjusted his glasses. ‘Well, you don’t have to doubt those were her most recent wishes. If you look at the last page, you’ll see she updated the will just about a month ago.’
I froze. ‘She did?’
‘Indeed,’ he said.
‘Did she change things?’ I flipped through the copy sitting in my lap and checked the date on the last page. It was old. ‘This one is from two years ago,’ I said.
‘You don’t say,’ Mr Allison said. He chuckled a little. ‘Well, maybe your mother has a surprise or two inside of her. Can I see that?’
‘She changed it a month ago?’ I asked. The volume of my voice had dropped. When I handed the copy of the will – the old will – over to Mr Allison, my hand shook ever so slightly. It felt as if those few pages of white legal paper weighed twenty-five pounds.
‘That’s right.’
A month. Right after our fight. Mr Allison had possession of the last words my mother would ever speak to me in the form of her bequests, and I had no idea what she might have to say – if anything. Would I finally find out what she really thought about my refusal to care for Ronnie? Would she cut me out entirely?
‘Is it changed a lot?’ I asked.
‘Oh, she rearranged the furniture a little.’ He must have noticed my shakiness, because he pointed to a copy of the will on his desk, then said, ‘Would you like me to explain what all this means?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘All righty,’ he said, adjusting the glasses again. He took the old will, the one I had brought, and tossed it onto the table behind him. ‘We don’t need that.’ He picked up the new one and handed it over to me. ‘The first page there just says all the typical gobbledygook that we have to say. Your mom’s of sound mind and body and a resident of this county and that this will supersedes any previous will she might have made. That’s how we know this one will stand up. The latest one signed by the person is the one that counts. Everything else is null and void.’
‘Okay,’ I said. I took the copy of the new will and scanned the first page. The words all ran together and meant nothing to me.
‘Then, on the second page there, you see that your mom directed that all of her property and assets, including any insurance policies she might have, be divided into three equal shares. Again, all pretty standard. If you go to the next page …’
But I wasn’t listening to him any more. My eyes were stuck on the second page and the section where it named the recipients of the equal shares of Mom’s estate.
‘Hold on,’ I said, raising my index finger.
‘What is it?’ Mr Allison asked.
‘Who is this person?’ I asked.
He looked up from his copy of the will. ‘Which person?’
I saw three names listed. Mine, Ronnie’s, and one more. I was relieved to see my name listed. I hadn’t been cut out. But someone else was included. Added, I should say. A name that wasn’t in the will Mom had in her drawer at home, the one I found the night she died.
‘This,’ I said. ‘Elizabeth Yarbrough. Who’s that and why is she in Mom’s will?’
‘You don’t know who she is?’ he asked.
I sat back in my chair and tried to think. I ran through the names of every relative I could think of – and there weren’t that many. Dad was an only child. My grandparents were dead. And then there was Paul and Ronnie and me. As far as friends … I think every single one of them was at the funeral, and I didn’t remember that name – Elizabeth Yarbrough – although it could have slipped past me.
‘Is she a friend of my mother’s?’ I asked.
Mr Allison frowned a little. He dug around on his desk and pulled out a manila folder. ‘You know what I do now that I’m getting older? I take notes whenever I talk with a client, just in case something like this comes up.’ He flipped the folder open. ‘Here we go.’ He read over something in the folder. ‘It just says here your mom came in and made this change to her will, adding this Elizabeth Yarbrough woman as one of her beneficiaries.�
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‘Did my mom say why?’ I asked.
‘No, ma’am. It says here that I asked your mom who this Yarbrough woman was. A friend or a relative. Your mom just said she was somebody close to the family, and I let it go at that.’ He closed the folder. ‘You know, I’ve handled your parents’ wills and things since you were born. Neither one of them was very rash or impulsive. If your mom said she wanted to make a change like this, I figured she meant it. I try not to argue with women who know their minds.’
‘Doesn’t she have to tell you who she’s leaving money to?’ I asked. ‘You’re the lawyer drawing it up.’
‘She’s under no obligation to tell me anything, even if I am her lawyer. It’s a family will. It’s not the Magna Carta. Now, if someone wants to contest it, that’s another matter.’
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’m not saying that.’ I stared down at the paper again, at that name. My first name too. My chest felt hollow. Here was something else I apparently didn’t know about Mom.
Mr Allison said, ‘It says right there Elizabeth Yarbrough of Reston Point, Ohio. That’s about an hour from here. Does your mom have any people there?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s from Haxton.’
‘That’s the other way,’ Mr Allison said. He scratched his chin. ‘You know what I’m thinking, don’t you?’
‘That Elizabeth Yarbrough is the person who called you on the phone the other day?’
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘She must have known, or suspected, that she was going to be named here. Your mother must have told her about that, and she must have known your mother had died. Of course, anyone could find that information out.’
I remembered the phone call, the one that had come on the day of Mom’s funeral. The woman said she was just getting to know Mom but couldn’t make it to the service. She didn’t give her name.
‘I guess we’ll hear from her again,’ I said.
He tapped the will with his index finger. ‘Do you want to look at the next page? There’s a provision for custody and care of your brother, who I believe has some special needs.’ I turned the page, and he said, ‘As you can see, your mother named you guardian of your brother and placed his share of the estate in trust to be managed and controlled by you. A little farther down, you’ll see she named you as executrix as well. She certainly had a lot of faith in you, and I bet that gave her a lot of peace.’