by Aj Harmon
“There’s no need, is there?” William asked Lewis.
Lewis shook his head. “Just tell us the important bits.”
“Very well,” Scott nodded. He perused through the page and paused. “When your mother died, ah, um, thirty-five years ago, there was a life insurance policy that your father received. He split it in half and set up funds for each of you, that go to you upon his death. I will have my staff take care of all of that. We’ll get them in your names which will allow you access to them. Secondly, all possessions, including the house and the car go to Lewis.”
William breathed a sigh of relief. He was so glad there would not be any discussion over that. Lewis was stunned.
“Really?” he asked. “Everything?”
Scott nodded. “You can do anything you want with them; sell, keep, give away, trash…whatever you want. It’s up to you. There are no instructions other to have the titles changed into your name, which, once again, my office will handle all of that. There is one exception, however. Your father’s journal, or journals as there are four of them, are to go to William. We have them here and will give them to you when you leave. The letters you have in your hands are personal notes written to you by your father about four months ago when he finalized this will. All legal documents are in order and nothing will go through the courts unless you choose to contest the will, William.”
“No!” he stated emphatically. “That will not happen. I am satisfied with the will. Lewis should get everything.”
“Fine,” Scott replied. “I will need some information from you both before you leave. My paralegal will take care of all of that and bring you the journals.” And with that he shook both their hands and was gone.
“I’m kind of stunned,” Lewis said.
“It’s good,” William nodded. “It’s as it should be. You should have everything.” And he truly meant it. He didn’t need the house and he didn’t want it.
“So there was an insurance policy, huh?”
William shrugged. “Dad never said anything to me about it.”
“No, me either. I had no idea. I wonder what this says?” he wondered as he looked at the envelope before him.
“Don’t know. Guess we’ll find out when we open it.”
The smartly dressed woman reappeared and began the task of gathering the information needed to complete their father’s final wishes. After fifteen minutes a box was brought in, given to William and their business was complete.
“I’ll show you out,” she said as she held the door open for them. They followed her back to reception and said goodbye. In somewhat of a daze, the brothers walked to the elevator and pushed the button.
“What are you going to do with those?” Lewis asked.
“I have no idea,” William answered honestly.
The brothers parted ways with a promise to stay in touch, Lewis suggesting he come to New York for Thanksgiving, to which William happily, enthusiastically agreed. They hugged…and remained in each other’s embrace for several seconds as they both silently recommitted to the other. They would work hard to ensure they didn’t miss out on the relationship they both wanted.
Lewis walked to the garage that housed his car and William hailed a cab, taking his father’s journals back to his hotel.
14.
“BEFORE WE SIGN,” ANNIE stuttered, “I think in good conscience I should disclose something.”
That statement had everyone looking up, wide eyed with anticipation. She definitely had their attention.
“We found out yesterday, by pure luck, I mean we had no idea, no clue at all,” Annie choked, her eyes filling with tears and beginning to spill down her cheeks.
“What is it, honey?” Barbara asked, deep concern in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong,” Annie sputtered. “We found out I’m pregnant. We didn’t think it could possibly happen and then…now. It’s nothing we expected.”
“That’s fabulous news!” Barbara beamed.
“Congratulations!” the attorney added.
“Why are you so sad though?” Barbara asked.
“Well, we’re adopting a baby because we can’t have children of our own and now I’m pregnant!”
“Be happy! You’ll have two babies to love!”
“This happens more often than you’d think,” the attorney chuckled. “This has no bearing on the adoption if that’s what you’re worried about. Just sign her and here and here.”
“Really?” Annie asked.
“Really. To both,” he grinned.
Evan picked up the pen first, signing his name in all three places quickly and handing the pen to Annie. She took it from him and smiled, signing her name right beside her husband’s.
“And there it is,” Barbara said. “Done. Grace Anne Wilder is officially and legally your child. You can leave the state of California anytime.”
The emotion Annie was barely keeping under control overcome her and Evan took her in his arms as the tears flowed freely, her face buried in his chest muffling the sobs of happiness.
The attorney gathered up the documents before him and quietly exited the room. Barbara watched for a moment, bent over and smiled at Gracie, still sleeping in her stroller, and then mouthed to Evan that she was also leaving. He smiled and nodded all the while holding his wife as her tears of joy poured unrestrained.
It took several minutes for Annie to gain control. “I think that’s ten years’ worth of tears right there on your shirt,” she stuttered between sniffles.
Laughing, Evan looked down at his shirt. “You should have used one of Gracie’s burp cloths.”
That seemed to lighten the mood and Annie laughed. “I think maybe my hormones are already taking control.”
“They’ve been doing that for years,” Evan chuckled. “This really isn’t that much different than what I’ve seen before. I’m kinda used to it.”
“Maybe,” Annie admitted with a smile. “Let’s go, shall we?”
“Ready to go home, Gracie?” Evan asked. “One more night in San Diego and then it’s back home and you’re gonna get the royal treatment.”
“Well she is a princess,” Annie grinned.
“That she is. She takes after her mommy.”
*****
It sat there…just staring back at him…a letter from his father sealed in an envelope laying on the desk of his hotel room. William felt unnerved. He was perplexed by its very existence. He was also wracked with guilt. His father had to talk to him through a letter…after he was dead.
On the floor beside the desk sat the box he’d been given at the attorney’s office. He’d removed the lid to find four leather journals, the first dating back to when his father attended high school in the mid 1950’s. William had flipped through the pages, not stopping to read, just periodically glancing at dates. His father’s life was summed up in these four books. They would be something to delve into when he returned home. For now though, the envelope in front of him was demanding his immediate attention.
With a hesitant hand, he carefully tore open the seal and removed the letter. It appeared to be two pages, handwritten. Just as the attorney had stated, it had been written four months ago, right before Christmas. The guilt was very present. It had been the week before that William had called his father to say that, once again, as usual, he would not be heading to San Diego for the holidays. He had patients that needed him and he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, take the time off. With a heavy heart, he began to read.
“Dear William,
The time is coming soon. I can feel it in these old bones. I’m ready. I’d like to think your mother is waiting for me. I hope so. I’ve been too long without her. It will be wonderful to be with her again.
We were happy, weren’t we? Before she died? The house was full of laughter and smiles and the smell of cookies and bread. And then it wasn’t anymore. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. As I look back on that time, I realize how much of a bad
father I was to you boys. I could have done better. I should have done better. But I can’t change what is in the past. What’s done is done. I understand why you wanted to get as far away as possible when you finished high school. I probably would have done the same thing in your shoes.
If I never told you, I want you to know how proud I am of you. I would tell everyone that would listen that MY son was accepted to Harvard. MY son was going to medical school. MY son was a doctor. You were always such a smart young man. I knew you would make something of yourself. I knew you would use that brain your mother gave you to make a difference in the world, and you are. I know that you’d come home for Christmas if you could. You are such a good doctor that you can’t leave your patients and I understand. You are a good boy.”
William closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He wasn’t a good boy. He was a coward. He was a grown man that was still pissed off about something that happened when he was eighteen. He should have come home for Christmas…it was his father’s last one and he missed it. He was too busy feeling sorry for himself and he missed it. Damn!!
Anger boiled inside him, causing his fist to clench, the letter tight in his grip. Yeah, he was a big shot doctor in New York but what did any of it mean if his life was empty. He was a shell…a shell with nothing to show for all of his success.
Opening his eyes he looked down at his hand and the crumpled paper he held in it. Quickly releasing it, he straightened the pages and forced himself to continue reading.
“Ever since I was about fifteen, I’ve kept a journal. It’s not something that I religiously wrote in or anything, just when the need arose I’d jot down my thoughts. Over the years I wondered what I would do with them when I got old. I want you to have them. We didn’t have a lot of time together once you were grown and there are probably things in those books that I would have told you if we’d had the time. So I thought that you could get to know me a little better when you read them. I want you know how much I love you and your brother and how much you meant to me. I didn’t say it very often. Rarely, in fact. But I wrote it. I wrote all about you and Lewis and your mother and I want you to have it. Maybe, one day, when you have children, they can read it to and get to know their grandpa. I’d like that.
These books are the only real possession I have, other than the picture of your mother that has sat on my nightstand all these years. But that is coming with me so all I leave is the journals. I want you to treasure them as much as I do. They are a piece of me. They are me.
I love you son, so very much.
Dad”
*****
Erica had worked at Rite-Aid Pharmacy for the last thirteen years. It was a steady job with little stress and a guaranteed paycheck every two weeks. She lived in a complex of fifty-four apartments and she’d made some good friends over the years. She lived modestly, her biggest extravagance being a weekly night out with her girlfriends on either Friday or Saturday night, a little salsa dancing and a margarita, or two, and then back to her quiet existence.
Running had become her hobby of choice. She’d run cross country in high school but had not continued for the first few years after she’d graduated. When her marriage to Lewis began crumbling, she returned to her favorite pastime as a form of therapy, and escape.
She punched out at work a little early and drove the few blocks home, thrilled with the realization that she had time to go for a run before she needed to get ready for her date with William. She quickly changed into shorts and her sports bra, tossed a t-shirt over her head and put her hair in a ponytail. Her house key was on a rubber band around her wrist and her phone was in her pocket, ear-buds securely in her ears.
Starting out slowly, Erica warmed up her muscles. It was another beautiful day, as most were, and welcomed the warmth from the sun on her skin. After a couple of hundred yards or so, her speed picked up and she ran.
Seeing William yesterday had brought up so much from the past…so much stuff she’d thought she’d left there a long time ago. As her feet pounded on the pavement her mind drifted back all those years, memories of high school and dances and the classic music of the 80’s that’s never been matched. She remembered William back then. He was painfully shy. She thought he was sweet, the kind of guy the girls would end up marrying, but certainly not the guy they dated in high school. Teenage girls were stupid. They wanted the bad boy, the dangerous boy, the adventure of the unknown. That’s what she’d chosen. It hadn’t worked out so well.
No, the Williams of high school got a bad rap. They were overlooked by hormonal girls with eyes for perceived virility not stability. If she could do it all over again, she would never have looked twice at Lewis. She would have waited for William…waited for him to notice her. He may not have been what the girls wanted back then, but the women would be all but banging down his door now.
She kept running, running ‘til the memories of the summer William had come home from college vanished back into the recesses of her mind. It didn’t do anybody any good to remember the crush she had on him that summer. It didn’t do her any good to remember that he barely spoke to her. It didn’t do her any good to remember that her heart would have been his if he’d just shown an interest, even a tiny one.
But it would be nice to catch up with him this evening. It would be nice to have dinner with a gentleman. It would be nice to imagine, even for just an hour or two, that things were different…that her life was different…that she was different.
15.
AS JILL AND GREG walked through downtown San Diego, hand in hand, they walked past a small clothing store with a gorgeous black dress in the window.
“Try it on,” Greg encouraged as he saw Jill gaze at it, admiring it.
“Nah. When would I ever wear it?”
“Tonight! Come on,” he grinned, as he dragged her into the shop.
Within minutes, she had the dress in her size hanging in the small dressing room and she was standing inside in front of the mirror. The fabric was so soft and as she pulled it over her head and it slid down her body like a second skin. Stepping out to find Greg waiting with anticipation, he offered to zip it up and then stood back to admire her.
“Wow,” he mouthed. “You are stunning.”
“So, it looks good then?”
“So much more than that.”
Jill saw her reflection in the mirror and admitted that it did look good on her. “So we are going somewhere tonight so I can wear this?”
“We are,” he winked.
The sales woman appeared with a pair of strappy black heels and a pair of exquisite silver earrings that completed the outfit.
“Perfect,” Greg smiled.
Jill bit her lips, trying to hide her smile. “Mmm,” she said. “I may just have to buy this.”
“My treat,” Greg insisted.
“I won’t argue with that,” Jill laughed. She slipped back into the dressing room and changed back into the clothes she wore in, fingering the intricate detail of tiny beads around the neckline of her new dress.
The new outfit was carefully wrapped in tissue paper, the shoes returned to their box and the earrings placed in a velvet box and all were placed in a store bag and handed over to Jill. She was slightly giddy with the new addition to her wardrobe. She didn’t buy much in the way of clothes. Most of her time was spent in an airline uniform, and she had a whole closet full of those. She was full of anticipation at the prospect of really getting dressed up for a night out with the man she loved. It was going to be a wonderful evening. She just knew it. How could it not be?
*****
William was sitting in the hotel bar finishing his second drink. Looking at his watch, he pulled out his phone and texted Erica. His emotions were all over the place. It was like he was on a rollercoaster of hope and optimism and guilt and longing for a do-over.
His phone chimed almost instantly with Erica texting back. She would meet him in the lobby of the hotel at six. He replied and told her to wear shoes she could walk in �
� they were walking up to a seafood restaurant the bellboy had recommended. It was only a few blocks away and William thought the walk would do him good…help to clear his mind of the day’s events and help him to appreciate the opportunity he had to spend time with Erica, as it would probably be the only chance he would have.
She replied with a smiley face and a thumbs up icon. He had time for another drink before he had to get changed, so with a nod to the bartender, his glass was refreshed. He needed courage, the kind only a stiff drink could give him.
*****
Erica couldn’t wipe the huge grin off her face. She felt positively ridiculous. Here she was, a woman in her mid-forties, acting like a teenage girl at the prospect of going on a date. She’d just stepped out of the shower when William had sent his text so all she had to do was blow dry her hair, put on a smattering of make-up and get dressed, made all the more easier by his request for her to wear comfortable shoes. That eliminated the need to stand in front of her closet searching for something to wear. Flat shoes meant a knee-length dress with a light weight jacket. Easy. Done!
Drying her hair didn’t take long. It was cut into a bob that came to just below her shoulders; long enough to be tied back when she ran, and short enough so it was easy to style when the need arose. In the mirror she could see the errant gray hair here and there, a sign she wasn’t getting any younger. She’d often thought about covering them at the salon, but she knew once she started she’d never be able to stop. That was a commitment she was not ready to make.
Commitment. It had been difficult after her divorce…commitment of any kind. Actually, she avoided it at all costs. She’d been in the running of a manager position at work, and she’d gracefully declined to offer a letter of interest. A friend had asked her if she wanted to buy a house together…a pretty little bungalow in east Chula Vista. Erica had gracefully declined, telling her friend she didn’t know how long she’d be staying in San Diego. That was seven years ago. No, commitment was hard. She was too scared of failing, just like in her marriage. She was content in her small life. It filled her need for keeping everything simple and uncomplicated.