11.
“You’ll be shocked what people will buy at an estate sale,” Jeannie said as we poked through the items in my mother’s china cabinet in the dining room. In my hand, I held an old green bowl that had clearly been broken in two and glued back together “Christine will want you to leave everything just as it is.”
“Even broken dishes?” I asked, holding the bowl so she could see the crack.
“Absolutely,” she said. “Artists use them to make jewelry and all sorts of things you can’t imagine. So we want to leave everything in place. You don’t need those boxes.” She pointed to the three empty boxes I’d found in the basement. My plan had been to fill them with things to donate, but Jeannie had a different idea. “I do want to get a closer look at the collections and figure out what sort of appraisers we need to call,” she said. “If there are any things you want to keep—items with sentimental value, for example—just set them aside. We can make a place for them in your father’s upstairs office. For now, you can clean out those cabinets in the living room where he kept all his paperwork.” She took the green bowl from my hand and put it back in the china cabinet. “Let’s go take a look in there,” she said, and I followed her into the living room. She stood in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, and both of us faced the ten built-in cabinets that ran the entire length of the living room beneath the windows. “I know he would just stuff insurance forms and all sort of things in there that can probably just be shredded. That can be your job.”
“All right.” I dreaded even opening those cabinets. I’d seen how Daddy crammed papers into them with as little care as if he was tossing them in the trash.
“Look at those hydrangeas!” Jeannie took a step toward the windows that overlooked the side yard. “How your father loved them,” she said. “I wish he could have had one more summer. He was looking forward to it. His favorite season.”
I hadn’t known that about my father and it irked me that she did. But I was determined to be nice to her today. I really needed her help.
“What the hell…?” She suddenly noticed that the sliding glass doors were missing from the pipe collection. “Where’s the glass?”
I thought of making something up, but decided to tell her the truth. “Danny was over the other night and he got upset about something and threw a beer bottle at them,” I said.
“That’s terrible!” she said. “Your father always insisted Danny wasn’t violent.”
“He’s not.” I remembered Danny saying he’d put on his PTSD act for Jeannie, whatever that meant. “He was just angry. He’d never hurt a person.”
“Are you very close to him?”
“I was when we were young. He was more withdrawn as he got older and we didn’t talk as much. He became more like my father, I guess. Very introverted.” I missed the Danny I’d grown up with.
“I don’t think of your father as all that introverted,” Jeannie said.
I worked hard to produce a smile. I was sick of her thinking she knew Daddy so much better than I did. “I guess we experienced him differently,” I said.
“Oh, well.” She smiled. “We both know he was a good man, and that’s what counts.”
I nodded. I would let it go at that.
Jeannie walked over to the pipes and lifted one of them from its ledge in the display case. “I’ve always been drawn to this one,” she said. The barrel of the pipe was carved in the shape of a bird’s head, complete with ruffled feathers and green beads for eyes. I noticed a serious tremor in her hands as she held the pipe. Was she nervous or ill? Whatever the cause, seeing that small weakness in her made me feel slightly sympathetic toward her. You never knew what demons people were dealing with.
“Would you like to have it?” I asked.
She looked surprised. “Oh, no,” she said. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I have to say, though, that I still can’t get over Frank leaving this collection to the Kyles.”
“Well, I guess they’ve helped him a lot with the park, and they—”
She made a sound of disgust. “I’ll tell you something,” she said. “I don’t like to gossip, but you should know why this makes no sense to me. Tom Kyle was beholden to your father, not the other way around.”
“What do you mean?”
Jeannie carefully replaced the pipe in the cabinet. “Your father was his supervisor back when they worked for the Marshals Service,” she said. “Tom had an affair with a client he was supposed to be protecting and Frank found out about it. He should have canned Tom, but he didn’t. He even helped him cover it up. Tom owed him his job and probably his marriage. So why would your father—”
“He’s been giving Tom checks for five hundred dollars every month, too,” I said.
Jeannie stared at me, and I saw a blaze starting in her eyes. “You’re joking.”
I shook my head.
“He could have given that money to me, if he was so hot to part with it,” she said bitterly. “I’m underwater on my mortgage, and I thought that after a six-year relationship, he—” She shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “It is what it is.”
Now I understood her lukewarm reaction to my father leaving her only the piano and ten thousand dollars. And I thought of the hundred thousand that would soon be in my own bank account.
“I’m sorry, Jeannie,” I said. “How can I help? He left me more than I need right now, and—”
She bent over and put her hand on mine. “Don’t even think about it, honey,” she said, her features softening. “I’m sorry to lose my composure like that, and I’m fine. Truly. I just wish I understood why Tom and Verniece rated so high in his opinion.”
“Do you know Verniece well?” I asked.
“Not all that well. They pretty much keep to themselves out there.”
“She told me I was adopted.”
Jeannie’s blue eyes flew open even wider than usual. “What?” she said. “That’s crazy.”
Had the color left her face or was I imagining it? “She says my mother told her I was.”
“She didn’t even know your mother,” Jeannie scoffed as she set the pipe back on its ledge again, fingers shivering. “Not really.”
I hesitated before I spoke again. “Well, she admitted that,” I said, “but according to Verniece, she was upset over losing a baby and my mother suggested that she wasn’t too old to adopt. She said she and Daddy adopted me, and that’s what encouraged Verniece and Tom to adopt a little boy.”
“Ludicrous,” Jeannie said. “Just utterly ludicrous. Think about it,” she said. “Even if it were true, your mother wouldn’t tell a near stranger, for heaven’s sake. You know what a private person she was.”