Chương 8
“I don’t know.”
He nodded.
“Me neither.”
Lydia remained by the bookcase, arms folded.
Mom stared at my envelope.
I slipped a finger beneath the flap.
It had never been sealed.
Inside were three sheets of lined legal-pad paper and a photocopy of something official.
The first line stopped me.
Owen, if your mother gives you this, she finally decided I was right about something.
I sat down on the edge of the old filing cabinet.
Grant looked over.
“What?”
I shook my head.
“Just Dad.”
That was enough for him to understand.
His mouth twitched.
I read the next line.
If she does not give it to you, then I hope you eventually find it while looking for one of my socket sets she swore I lost.
My vision blurred.
I looked toward the desk.
Mom pressed a hand over her mouth.
“He wrote that?”
I nodded.
Grant laughed once.
Then he looked down quickly.
I kept reading.
Dad’s letter was not graceful.
He had never been graceful.
He complained about the pen, crossed out three words, and wrote in the margin that the nurse had brought him decaf coffee and therefore could not be trusted.
Then the letter changed.
I want you to have the cabin.
Not because Grant is bad and not because you are better.
Grant needs money more than he needs property, and if I leave him the cabin he will sell it before the first winter tax bill arrives.
Grant, reading his own letter across from me, made a wounded sound.
“What?”
I looked up.
“He called you out.”
Grant stared at his page.
“He called me financially allergic to delayed gratification.”
Lydia covered her mouth.
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Grant shook his head.
“That old bastard.”
There was affection in it.
Mom looked away.
I returned to the letter.
Dad wrote that the cabin had never been valuable in the way people meant when they talked about real estate.
It had bad insulation, uneven floors, stubborn pipes, and a septic system he described as “an expensive underground opinion.”
He wrote that I understood the difference between fixing something because it had resale value and fixing it because I intended to keep using it.
That sentence hurt.
I stopped reading.
Grant noticed.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Same.”
He lowered his letter.
For several seconds all we heard was the ticking clock in the hallway and the distant hum of traffic outside.
I forced myself to continue.
Dad wrote that he had asked Mr. Bell to prepare the transfer paperwork.
He wrote that Mom did not like the plan.
He understood why.
The cabin was one of the few substantial assets outside the investment accounts and life insurance.
Giving it to me outright would make the estate look uneven.
He believed uneven was not the same as unfair.
Then came a paragraph about Grant.
He is going to hate this for about twenty minutes.
Maybe twenty years if he is having a dramatic week.
Grant looked up.
“Does yours insult me too?”
“Consistently.”
“Good.”
Dad wrote that Grant would receive seventy-five thousand dollars from the brokerage account because he needed stability more than sentiment.
He wrote that Grant loved his children and scared himself whenever the bills grew faster than his paycheck.
Grant stopped reading his own letter.
His face changed.
I looked back down.
Do not use this as another reason to be angry with your brother.
He has enough reasons to be angry with himself.
I had to stop again.
Grant stared at me.
“What does it say?”
I hesitated.
Then I handed him the page.
He read the paragraph.
His jaw tightened.
He read it twice.
Finally, he handed it back.
“Yeah.”
That was all he said.
Mom sat perfectly still behind the desk.
I reached the final page.
Dad said he did not expect either of us to agree with every choice he made.
He had spent enough years as a father to know children eventually discovered their parents were simply people with access to car keys.
He wrote that he hoped Mom would bring him the deed before his next hospital admission.
If she did not, he would ask Bell to come directly.
My eyes stopped there.
I looked at Mom.
“You told me he asked again.”
She nodded.
“He never called Bell?”
“No.”
“Why?”
She stared at her lap.
“He tried.”
The room tightened around the words.
“What does that mean?”
“The day after he asked me for the papers, he called Bell’s office.”
“Did he speak to him?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Bell called the house afterward.”
Grant straightened.
“What did you tell him?”
Mom’s hands closed around each other.
“That David was confused.”
I stared at her.
“You told his lawyer he was confused.”
“Yes.”
“Was he?”
“He was taking morphine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her face reddened.
“Sometimes he was clear, sometimes he wasn’t.”
“Was he clear when he asked for the deed?”
She did not answer.
“Mom.”
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible.
Grant stood and walked to the window.
He put both hands on the sill.
I felt anger arrive differently this time.
Not hot.
Not sharp.
Heavy.
“You deliberately stopped him from completing it.”
“I thought I was protecting the estate.”
“You were protecting yourself.”
“I was protecting all of us.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“You don’t know what those months were like.”
“Then tell me.”
“I was terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Being alone.”
That answer stopped me.
Mom’s face folded in on itself.
“Everyone kept talking about assets and accounts and insurance and what would happen after he died.”
Her voice shook.
“And your father was giving things away while I was trying to pretend he wasn’t dying.”
Nobody interrupted.
“I thought if I let him sign papers, then I was agreeing with him that there was an after.”
She wiped at her cheek angrily.
“That sounds stupid now.”
May you like
“It sounds human,” Lydia said.
Mom looked at her.
