Chapter 8: The Problem With the Will
The lawyer's office was on a quiet street six blocks from the water, in a low building with a tile roof and a parking lot full of sensible cars.
Patricia had asked us to wait.
We waited.
Grandma and I found a bench in a small park across the street and sat in the shade of a live oak while the morning got warm around us.
"She'll be all right," Grandma said.
"You don't know that."
"No," she agreed.
"But she's tougher than she looks."
Twenty minutes passed.
Then forty.
At the fifty-minute mark, the door to the building opened and Patricia came out.
Her brother was behind her — a heavyset man in a short-sleeved shirt, mid-fifties, with the look of someone who has recently won an argument and is still deciding how to feel about it.
Patricia crossed the street toward us.
Her brother stopped at the edge of the parking lot and watched.
"Everything okay?" I asked.
"No," Patricia said.
She sat down on the bench beside Grandma.
"My mother changed her will six months ago.
George Jr.
didn't know.
I didn't know." She pressed her hands flat on her knees.
"She left the house to me.
Not split between us — to me.
Specifically."
"And your brother is upset," Grandma said.
"He's furious." Patricia looked across the street.
George Jr.
was still standing there, arms crossed.
"He says she wasn't in her right mind.
He says I must have influenced her somehow.
He's talking about contesting it."
"Were you close to her?" Grandma asked.
"More than he was?"
"I was there," Patricia said simply.
"He lives in Atlanta.
He visited twice last year.
I drove down every month.
I handled the doctors, the medications, the — everything." She stopped.
"I'm not saying that to be bitter.
I'm saying it because it's true."
"Did she tell you why she changed it?"
"No.
She never mentioned it." Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"The lawyer said she came in alone.
Completely lucid.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
She left George a letter explaining it." Patricia looked at her hands.
"He won't tell me what it says."
Grandma was watching George Jr.
across the street.
He had his phone to his ear now.
"What does the lawyer say?" Grandma asked.
"That it's valid.
That contesting it will be expensive and almost certainly unsuccessful." Patricia exhaled.
"George doesn't care about expensive.
He cares about being right."
"What do you want to do?"
Patricia looked at her.
"I want to know why she did it," she said.
"I want to understand what she was thinking.
Because it doesn't feel like a gift — it feels like a message.
And I don't know what the message is."
Grandma was quiet for a moment.
"Did your mother keep a journal?" she asked.
Patricia blinked.
"Yes.
She kept one for years.
I don't know where it is.
I haven't gone through everything in the house yet."
"Then that's where you start," Grandma said.
George Jr.
had finished his call.
He was walking toward us now, across the street, with the deliberate pace of someone who has decided to have a conversation he believes he will control.
He stopped in front of the bench.
"Patricia." He didn't look at Grandma or me.
"We need to talk.
Privately."
"These are my friends," Patricia said.
That stopped him for half a second.
He looked at Grandma — really looked at her, the way his sister had on the plane, sizing her up.
"I don't know who you are," he said to Grandma.
"But this is a family matter."
"Then perhaps," Grandma said pleasantly, "you should speak to your family about it."
George Jr.'s jaw tightened.
"Patricia," he said, voice lower now.
"Mom wasn't herself those last months.
You know that.
Whatever she signed—"
"The lawyer said she was lucid," Patricia said.
"The lawyer works for the estate.
He's not exactly neutral."
"She came in alone, George.
She didn't tell me she was going.
She didn't ask me to come.
She did it by herself because she wanted to."
"Or because you'd been in her ear for months while the rest of us weren't there—"
"The rest of us." Patricia's voice went flat.
"You mean you."
George Jr.'s mouth pressed into a line.
"I have a family," he said.
"I have a job.
I can't just drop everything every month like you apparently can."
"No," Patricia said.
"You can't.
And Mom noticed."
The silence between them had edges.
George Jr.
looked at Grandma again.
Then at me.
Then back at his sister.
"This isn't over," he said.
He turned and walked back to the parking lot.
Got into a silver sedan.
Sat there for a moment without starting it.
Patricia watched him.
"He's going to make this very difficult," she said.
"Yes," Grandma said.
"He is."
"I don't want to fight my brother over a house."
"I know," Grandma said.
"But I don't think the house is what your mother left you."
Patricia looked at her.
"What do you mean?"
Grandma folded her hands in her lap and looked across the street at the silver sedan, which still hadn't moved.
"Ellie was a careful woman," she said.
"She kept an unsent letter for sixty years.
She didn't do things without reasons." She paused.
"Find the journal, Patricia.
Whatever she wanted you to understand — it's in there."
The silver sedan started.
George Jr.
pulled out of the lot without looking back.
Patricia watched him go.
Then she looked at us — at me, and then at Grandma — with the expression of someone standing at the edge of something large.
"Will you come with me?" she said.
"To the house?"
May you like
Grandma picked up her bag.
"That," she said, "is why we're here."
