Chapter 9: The Weekend in Tucson
I drove to Tucson on Saturday morning with Lily in her car seat and a folder of documents on the passenger seat.
Marcus had offered to come.
I told him I needed to do this part alone — or as alone as you can be with a seven-month-old who narrates the entire drive in sounds that are almost words.
Gerald's house was a small adobe on a quiet street with a big mesquite tree in the front yard.
I sat in the driveway for a moment after I parked.
Then the front door opened and Gerald came out — older, heavier, with the same wide forehead I remembered from childhood — and he was already smiling before I got Lily out of the car.
"Let me see her," he said, and I handed Lily over without ceremony, and watched my uncle hold my daughter with the careful tenderness of a man who understood exactly what he was holding.
"He's in the back," Gerald said quietly.
"He's been up since six.
Wouldn't eat breakfast.
Too nervous."
I went through the house alone.
My father was sitting in a recliner near the back window, a blanket across his lap, the morning light coming in sideways across his face.
He was thinner than I had imagined.
His hair had gone fully white.
His hands, resting on the arms of the chair, looked fragile in a way that his hands had never looked when I was a child.
He turned when he heard my footsteps.
For a moment neither of us moved.
Then I crossed the room and crouched down in front of his chair and took both of his hands in mine, and he bent forward and pressed his forehead against mine the way he used to do when I was small, and neither of us said anything for a long time.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, against my hair.
"I'm so sorry, Claire."
"I know, Dad."
"I should have—"
"I know." I pulled back and looked at him.
His eyes were wet.
Mine were too, and I didn't try to hide it.
"We're not going to spend this weekend on what should have happened.
We're going to spend it on what happens next."
He nodded.
He squeezed my hands.
"Okay."
"But first," I said, "I want you to meet someone."
I went back to the front of the house and took Lily from Gerald, and carried her back to the sunlit room, and set her in my father's lap.
He looked down at her with an expression I will never be able to fully describe.
Something between wonder and grief and gratitude, all at once.
Lily looked up at him with her serious eyes.
Then she grabbed his finger.
He laughed.
A real laugh, surprised out of him.
"She's strong."
"She gets it from her mother's side," I said.
He laughed again, and it was the best sound I had heard in ten years.
We spent the afternoon going through his recollections of the will signing.
Gerald sat with us and took notes.
My father remembered more than I expected — the specific afternoon, the coffee Derek had brought, the way Stuart Phipps had talked quickly through the pages and pointed to the signature lines without reading aloud.
"He said it was standard," my father said again.
"He said the language about prior heirs was just legal boilerplate."
"It wasn't," I said.
"I know that now." He looked at the notes Gerald had written.
"Will this be enough?
For the lawyer?"
"It's a strong start.
Janet will want to take a formal statement.
Probably next week, over video call."
He nodded.
"I'll do whatever she needs."
That evening, after Lily was asleep in the portable crib Gerald had set up, the three of us sat in the living room and my father said, "Where is Brenda now?"
"She's staying at my house," I said.
He looked at me carefully.
"Is she."
"She came to me with the documents.
She's the reason I know any of this." I held his gaze.
"I'm not forgiving her for what she did when I was eighteen.
But she did the right thing this time."
He was quiet for a moment.
"She was always complicated."
"Yes."
"I don't expect you to—"
"I'm not." I said it gently but clearly.
"I'm just telling you where things stand."
He nodded slowly.
"Derek called me on Thursday," he said.
"I told him I needed to speak with a lawyer before I discussed anything.
He didn't like that."
"What did he say?"
My father's expression shifted.
"He said that you were only involved because of money.
That you'd been gone for ten years and now that there was something to inherit, here you were." He paused.
"I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever heard, and that if he called again before I spoke with my lawyer, I would consider that harassment."
I stared at him.
He raised an eyebrow slightly.
"I'm sick, Claire.
I'm not senile."
I reached over and squeezed his hand.
May you like
"No," I said.
"You're really not."
