Pearl handed each of us a can and smiled back at Sam. “I’m Pearl. So Sam—you’re Wynn’s new employee?”
“Provisional employee,” I said, popping the top. “She’s got one more day to prove herself. I’m still on the fence.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot toward each other like magnets and her mouth tightened into a knot. If she’d had laser vision, I’d have been sliced up one side and down the other. Leaning halfway out of her chair, she plunked the can on the concrete and put all her effort behind that torque wrench, fighting to keep from smarting off to me in front of Pearl.
Pearl caught my eye with a tiny shame on you shake of her head and that damned smirk I’d do almost anything to set off.
I tipped the can back with a quick wink, taking a long swallow to hide my grin from Sam.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
In clearing out Dad’s room, I’d discovered things I’d forgotten he had and things I’d been unaware he had. Time-pressed to empty the room, I’d tossed anything worthy of keeping into a box I put aside for later inspection. Between Pearl moving in and Sam showing up, I’d forgotten about the box and my appointment with Mr. Amos until it popped up on my phone’s reminders.
I separated tax forms and any documents that looked business-related from birth certificates and photos I’d known nothing about—two or three of my mother and a few dozen of Brent and me, but none past the age we were when Mom left. I unearthed the flat box containing Brent’s Silver Star Medal. Inside, along with the Medal, were his dog tags and a laminated photo. I slipped the chain over my head and dropped the tags into my shirt.
The photo was a selfie of Brent and Arianna on the beach. Behind them, the sun was coming up over the water. It was scratched up like it had been in a wallet, taken out often. He’d probably had this photo with him—either on him when he died or with his effects. It had been eight years, which some days felt like a century and some days like yesterday. I flipped it over.
Arianna had written: Your home is right here next to me ~ A.
In my mind, my big brother had always been older and stronger than me, but he’d been my age when he died—twenty-two—and now I was weeks from turning the age he’d never be. The only decent parts of me were there because of him. Tears that hadn’t come when Dad died came all too easily for the brother who’d been more of a father to me than my old man had ever been. But when Brent was a boy, getting called words a kid shouldn’t even hear, taking punches from a full-grown man to protect our mother, to protect me, who’d stepped in to be a father for him?
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Mr. Amos’s office was the front room of his wood-frame house off Palm Drive, where he lived alone. I parked in the driveway, next to a well-used boat sitting on a trailer, ready to be hooked to the white Silverado backed up to it. A couple of palm trees and a massive oleander shrub shaded the porch swing to the left of the doorway. The only way I knew I was at the right place was the wooden sign hanging beside the front door that said Barney Amos, Attorney at Law.
I handed over the box full of possibly significant papers and checked out his office walls and shelves while he examined them. In addition to his law school diploma (Loyola—I’d heard of that one), there was a pic of him with fishing buddies, one with the mayor, one of his daughter on her wedding day, and one of Austin—a smidge older than Mateo’s boys—holding a bass as tall as he was. In Cub Scouts, we’d called him Bug on account of his eyes.
I’d forgotten Bug had a sister and couldn’t remember her name, but she looked a lot like him—same thin nose and big eyes. She’d been few years ahead of us in school and moved away with her mom after the accident. Despite a DUI conviction, Mr. Amos—so wasted he hadn’t known what had happened until the next day—hadn’t been held responsible for the wreck. A drag-racing kid had run a red light and T-boned the passenger side of his car, flipping it three times, killing Austin instantly and permanently injuring Mr. Amos in ways both obvious and not.
During one of his few AA sponsor visits with Dad, I’d heard him say, “If I’d been sober, maybe I would’ve heard him coming and hit the brakes. Maybe I wouldn’t have been in that intersection. Maybe Austin would be alive.”
Dad didn’t give a shit, I guess. Wasn’t moved the way I was, thinking about Bug, who would never turn seven. Frozen at the age he died—just like Brent.
“No new will or divorce papers, Boyce?”
“No sir, none that I could find. What happens if there’s no will? And maybe he just didn’t keep the divorce papers? I can imagine him lighting them on fire well enough.”
“Yes, yes—that’s true, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Have a seat, son.”
I sat and watched his face—the right side of it, anyway. The left side, in its permanent droop, gave no clue to whatever it was that made him stick a finger behind the collar of his shirt and give it a yank like his tie was on too tight even though he wasn’t wearing one.
He took a deep breath through his nose and folded his hands. “Bud had a will, Boyce. It was made before your mama quit town. I have a copy of it here.” He placed a palm on a paper-clipped set of documents.
Seeing as how I’d been searching that damned trailer high and low for a will, it seemed odd that he had it. I waited for him to explain, because I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the hell was going on.
“It names your mama as the primary beneficiary. I drew it up myself—after insisting that he and Ruthanne each needed a simple will because they had minor children. My intention was to protect you and Brent.” He took another slow breath, lips pinched. “I was hoping you’d find a new will, revoking any previously made. But more importantly, I was hoping you’d find divorce papers.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, but that was a lie. I got the gist of what he was saying. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what, exactly, it meant. Because there was no goddamned way it meant what it sounded like.
“I’ve sent to Austin and the surrounding states for a divorce decree, but nothing’s come up yet. In the absence of a divorce decree, which would invalidate any wills made prior to it—”
“Are you seriously about to tell me that even though she left us—left him—fifteen years ago, she’s going to get the trailer and the stuff in it?”
I hadn’t thought the man could look more pained than he normally looked, but I was wrong.
“Assuming she’s alive and was still married to your father upon his death, your mother is entitled to everything that belonged to Bud. If there hadn’t been a will, she’d still inherit all their community property, because she is—as far as I can find—his legal spouse.”