Now, here’s the deal. The reason I set up the will the way I did was entirely selfish. I wanted you to think about me and only me for two whole weeks, I knew if I just left you what I owned in a conventional manner, after a day or two of speculation, your life would go on, and I’d just be a small, peculiar incident. But for two weeks, I wanted to be special. And I wanted you never to forget me. Thank you for indulging my last request. The money is yours to do whatever you want with. Some of it I saved from my salesman job, but when your mother asked me to watch over you from a distance, I had to find another way to make money so I could live near you. Unfortunately some of the lessons I learned growing up kicked back in, and I used them to make a living for myself. I did what I had to do to survive and to carry out your mother’s wishes. That’s really all I can say. I guess, in the long run, we are more like our parents than we realize. I wish we could have met, Benni. So many times I was tempted to strike up a conversation with you. We stood next to each other in lines as often as I could manage it. You are a wonderful woman. I fell in love with your smile. It was just like your mother’s. I don’t know exactly when you’ll be reading this, but I sense it will be soon. My heart has not felt right lately, and I’m very tired. Remember me with some kindness, if you can. If this game I set up for you has caused you any pain, please forgive me. Use the money as you see fit. I trust your judgment. With love, your uncle Garrett
The last few sentences I read through a sheen of tears. I didn’t know what to think. My uncle. My mother’s only brother. Well, half brother. A person even my father hadn’t known about. The feelings were too complex and confusing for me to sort out right now. I folded the letter and slipped it back in the envelope. What I needed to do was go see Gabe. Show him this money. Show him Jacob’s . . . my uncle Garrett’s letter. I wanted his arms around me as I cried for the man who was so desperate and so lonely. I needed to talk until I had no energy to talk anymore.
I picked up my mother’s letter and stared at it a moment—the last words of hers I’d ever read. I stuck it back in the box with my uncle’s letter and the money and stood up. Inside the house where it was warm and quiet would be a better place to read it. Next to me, Scout growled low in his throat, then before I could stop him, he barked.
“Scout, no,” I whispered loudly, but it was too late. Someone walked through the back gate. I held the flashlight toward the direction he was looking and saw Duane.
“What’s goin’ on back here?” he asked, his voice slurring. Obviously he was on his way home from another night of closing down the Masthead.
“Get lost,” I said, clutching the box to my chest. “This is private property.”
“Now, you’re holding on to that box like it was your long-lost baby or something. That makes me real curious. Lemme see it.”
Scout growled again. I grabbed his collar, struggling to hold the box with one arm. “I mean it. Get off my property, or I’ll call the police.”
“Get off my property, or I’ll call the police,” he mimicked in a falsetto voice. Then he pulled a small hand pistol out of his jacket pocket. “Let me see the box.”
The trembling pistol in his hand captured my attention like a swaying cobra. His glassy-eyed expression froze my blood. If he was sober, I was certain he’d never be this foolish. But alcohol-induced bravado is not something to mess with. I slowly set the box on the ground in front of me, bending down to open it. “Let me just get my letters ...”
“Get back,” he said, walking toward it. Scout growled, and I gripped his collar tighter, whispering no. Duane opened the box and pulled out a wrapped stack of bills. “Shit, I was right about ol’ Jake. My brother said I was nuts, that Jake didn’t have no treasure hidden, but looky here. It’s like winning the lottery.”
“Get real, Duane,” I said. “Do you really think you can walk out of this yard with that money and have me not tell anyone?” The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wanted to grab them back. Smart move, Harper. If he needed a reason to shoot you, you just gave him one.
He stared at me a moment, the gun still in his hand. It was taking a while for his booze-soaked brain to formulate a plan. Murdering me would not be a logical, sensible solution. Then again, I wasn’t dealing with the crown prince of Mensa. I started to tell him to just take the money, that I wouldn’t tell, praying he’d be stupid enough to buy my story, when someone spoke behind me.
“Put the gun down,” Rich’s voice said from behind me. I turned around and watched him come through the hidden gate in the ivy-covered fence. He trained a huge automatic handgun on Duane’s skinny chest.
Duane gaped at him, slack-mouthed.
“Lay the gun on the ground in front of you. Now,” Rich said, his voice harder and more authoritative than I’d ever heard it. He sounded almost like a . . . well, Gabe.
“Do it, asshole!” he commanded.
Hearing language he could finally understand, Duane did as he was told and placed his hands on his head without instructions. He obviously knew the steps to this dance by heart.
“Step back two paces,” Rich said.
Duane slowly took two long, shaky steps backward, almost tripping over his own feet because he was so drunk.
“Get on your knees.”
Duane complied, his mouth still open.
“Now lay facedown.”
After Duane was flat on the ground, Rich came around me and in seconds had Duane’s hands cuffed behind him.
“Get the gun, Benni,” Rich said, pulling Duane to a sitting position.
Letting go of Scout’s collar, I scrambled forward and picked up Duane’s small pistol.
“Call the police, mija,” Rich said.
I stared at him a moment, my own mouth open. “Where did you get those cuffs? Why do you have a gun?”
“Call the police. We’ll talk later.”
After the Morro Bay police arrived and they took my statement and took Duane down to the station to book him for assault with a deadly weapon, I called Gabe. The sun had just started to peek up above the horizon, and I’d made a pot of coffee for me and Rich. While we waited for Gabe to arrive, Rich explained the gun and cuffs.
“I was an arson investigator,” he said, sipping his coffee. “We have to go to the police academy just like cops. And we carry a gun and cuffs. No big mystery. And in case you’re wondering, it’s Scout’s bark that woke me. I knew it wasn’t normal for him to be outside that time of morning, much less barking, so . . .” He grinned at me. “Like a good cop, I assumed the worse and came prepared.”
We both looked at the box of money sitting on the table between us. “Are you going to tell me what that’s all about?” he asked.
“Yes, but I want to tell Gabe first. I . . .”
“It’s okay,” he said, putting a warm hand on mine. “I understand. I’ll just sit here with you until your husband arrives.”
Rich left when Gabe arrived wearing rumpled jeans and a worried expression.
“I’ll come over and explain everything later,” I promised Rich.
“What happened?” Gabe asked.
I opened the metal box. The sight of all that money caused his eyes to widen. “Before I let you read his letter, I have to explain some things.” Then I started to talk.
16
AFTER I’D TOLD Gabe everything and he’d read my uncle’s last letter to me, he took my hand and pulled me onto his lap, holding me close. Exactly what I needed.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through this,” he said finally.
I looked down into his tired face. “I’m . . .” I paused, trying to put into words how I felt. “I’m fine . . . I’m glad it’s over. There’re still questions, but the biggest one was answered. And I’ll be home soon. That’s the most important thing.”
“What was in your mother’s letter?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.”
He answered by kissing me softly on the lips. “Let’s see how much money there is.” The final coun
t was 80,300 dollars.
“Is it legally mine?” I asked.
Gabe nodded. “I believe so. There’s no proof except the vague references in his letter that this money was gained illegally. It’s not as if you found it wrapped in a bank’s money bag. And some of it he stated he’d saved from working. There’s no way to tell how much is what. I’d check with Amanda to be certain, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and say it was found on your property, so that makes it yours.”
It only took me ten seconds to make the decision. “I don’t want any of it. Since we don’t know what he made by illegal means, I’ll give it all away. I don’t want our life tainted with it.”
At a little past nine a.m. Gabe got ready to leave, taking the money with him to lock up in the police station’s evidence locker until I could deposit it in a bank account somewhere. “I need to shower and get dressed for work,” he said. “Don’t forget, today’s the big decision day at the Historical Museum.”
“I’ll come down as soon as I get cleaned up.”
“Try to get some sleep,” he said, cupping my chin in his hand. “You look beat.”
“You, too, Friday.”
After he left, I lay down on the sofa, Scout at my feet, and studied the envelope containing my mother’s letter, probably the last one she’d ever written. For the first time I wondered why she never thought to write a letter directly to me. Not believing she was really going to die? Not knowing what to say? Perhaps the second one. What would you say to your child when you knew she had her whole life ahead of her and you wouldn’t be there while she lived it? How to choose the words, how to put down all the things you wanted her to know? Maybe it was just too overwhelming a task when all you were doing was trying to take another breath.
Part of me didn’t want to read it, ever, needing instead to keep the possibility of its words always there, like a kind of hope. I’d learned one sad fact about life a long time ago: that often the truth isn’t nearly as beautiful or easy as your dreams. But truth was real. And in the long run, real was better than any illusion. The letter was sent to Jacob Chandler, General Delivery, Sacramento, California. I slowly opened the letter.
Dear Garrett,
I’m using your real name this one last time, because it is the last time. I want to write to my brother, not some man I’ve never heard of. I’m dying. I didn’t tell you this in the other letters because I didn’t want you to worry or feel bad. Your life has been tragic enough. But I can’t wait any longer. I’m so weak these days that my writing looks like that of an old woman. I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself. The indignities are something you can’t even imagine. I just wanted to tell you how much I love and have missed you all these years. How often I wished our lives could have turned out differently. And I have a request. Please look out for Benni. I know she will be taken care of and loved by Ben and Dove and their wonderful family, but you are her family, too. Except for Ervalean, you are the only family I have left. I know you can’t actually tell her who you are, but if you can, once in a while drop by this area and see that she is doing okay. I cannot bear the thought of not being with her. I am trying so desperately to understand why God has chosen to take me away from her, but it is beyond me. I am grateful she has Dove, but I am so afraid she won’t remember me. That, perhaps, is the cruelest blow of all. I have tried writing her a letter, but the task overwhelms me. There is just too much to say. I don’t know where to start. I will trust Ben and Dove to tell her what she needs to know, to give her the love I won’t be there to give. I love you, dear brother, and hold in my heart the hope we will be reunited in eternity.
Always, your Ally Lou
I was right about why she hadn’t written me, but that didn’t ease the ache of sadness. Why couldn’t she have at least tried? A few sentences. Something. Anything. One thing to take with me through my life. Except for my hazy, little-girl memories, she would remain someone whose personality I knew only through her relationship with others. As she said in her letter, that was maybe the cruelest blow of all. I sat for a long time before the tears came. Slowly at first, like the trickle of a summer creek, then wet and loud and violent as a spring flood. Scout stuck his nose in my face, whining, licking at the tears, and I sobbed into his thick, furry neck until I felt there wasn’t any drop of moisture left inside me. Then I fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
When I woke, the clock said four o’clock. I jumped up, hoping I hadn’t missed the San Celina Seven’s triumphant moment. I fed Scout, took a quick shower, and threw on a thick blue sweater and jeans.
I arrived at the museum just in time. Uncaring, I parked next to a fire hydrant and ran with Scout to the police command post. Mayor Davenport was being escorted by Gabe up the museum’s steps. Two uniformed police officers flanked them. Reporters and media people snapped pictures and yelled out questions.
“What’s going on?” I gasped.
“The San Celina Seven and the mayor are having a meeting,” Bliss said. “They are presenting their ultimatum.”
“Their ‘Hail Mary pass,’ so to speak,” Jim Cleary said, his black eyes twinkling.
We stood anxiously drinking bad coffee from a dispenser in the back of the police van, waiting for the mayor and Gabe. Twenty minutes later they emerged. I could tell by Gabe’s relaxed face that it was over. Behind him marched the San Celina Seven with Dove in the forefront. Reporters flocked around the mayor and the senior citizens. As the mayor began his statement to the media, Gabe slipped away and walked toward us.
I ran to meet him halfway. “What happened?”
“Over here,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to hold back his grin.
When we were safely away from curious ears, he said, “The mayor changed his vote. The historical society will get its twenty-year lease.”
“They actually did it! What in the world changed his mind?”
“A small picture his mother has of him. One she threatened to give to the newspapers and television stations.”
“A picture? He changed his vote ’cause he didn’t like his picture? I mean, I know he’s vain, but . . .”
Gabe laughed out loud, a hearty, masculine sound I’d really missed living apart from him. “The bong pipe in his mouth might have something to do with it.”
“Oh, no! You mean he ...”
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