This news was a surprise to Hanna Marie. “What woman lawyer?”
“The one from New York. She used to come to town every once in a while, supposedly to talk business, but they always looked a little too hanky-panky for my taste.”
“I don’t remember ever meeting her. What did she look like?”
“Oh, she was pretty, I guess, if you like redheads.”
“Did you hear that, Hanna Marie? That woman at your grave that day was his lawyer.”
Everybody immediately thought, “And probably his girlfriend as well,” but nobody said it.
—
HEARING THE INFORMATION LITTLE Miss Davenport had just revealed upset all of Hanna Marie’s friends and family out at Still Meadows, especially her mother, Beatrice. “He’d seemed like such a nice boy,” she said.
—
HANNA MARIE WAS ABSOLUTELY devastated to have let her father down. She kept saying, “I’m so sorry, Daddy. I’m just so sorry.”
Ander said, “That’s all right, honey, it’s not your fault. I had a feeling he might try and pull something. That no-good…”
Birdie Swensen, Hanna Marie’s grandmother, jumped in. “Hanna Marie, this is Grandmother. Don’t blame yourself. Nobody is mad at you, isn’t that right, Katrina?”
Katrina, her great-aunt, said, “Not one little bit, sweetheart. It’s that man we’re upset with. He must have done something shady.”
Gene Nordstrom, her cousin, called out, “I just wish I could get my hands on that guy.”
“Yeah, me, too,” said Gustav Tildholme. “I’d give him what for.”
Pretty soon, the whole hill was humming about what they would do. Merle Wheeler said, “There are ladies present, or I’d tell what I’d do.”
Katrina didn’t say it, but she knew that it would have broken Lordor’s heart to know that the dairy had gone to a stranger. And the idea that this man was going to get away with it didn’t seem fair.
—
AT THE END OF THE DAY, Elner Shimfissle pretty much summed up the frustration everybody was feeling. “Well, dag-dog it,” she said, “this is definitely not one of the perks of being deceased. Here we have pertinent information that could send that no-good crook to jail, and there’s not a single thing we can do about it.”
Her affair with Michael Vincent had started in New York. She had been in the legal department of the advertising agency that handled the dairy account. He said he and his wife were not happy, but she was deaf, and he just didn’t feel he could divorce her.
And then to make matters worse, he found out that his wife’s last will and testament had left him entirely out. His father-in-law had been a bastard and, besides, he said his wife had not been in her right mind when she had made it out. She had been manipulated by other family members to cut him out of what he deserved. It wasn’t fair to Michael. He had worked so hard for so many years and had built the company from scratch, and then to be treated like that. At least, that’s what she had been told. And she had been head over heels in love with him. Sometimes a woman in love doesn’t see what’s right in front of her eyes. Even a woman with a law degree.
—
SHE HAD BEEN WITH HIM in his hotel room the day he received the call about his wife’s accident. Although they had not lived as man and wife for a long time, he seemed terribly upset.
She had changed the will for him, long before the wife had died, long before she had found out what a monster he was and how she had been used. It hadn’t been too hard. Remove a clause here, a clause there, reword a few things, change the names of the beneficiaries. Of course, she could have been disbarred for doing it, but at the time, he had been so grateful, and it was, after all, for both of their futures, he had said.
What a fool she had been to believe him. After the wife died, he stopped calling. That’s when she started putting two and two together. She had flown in, rented a car, and driven to his office in Elmwood Springs to confront him. When she threatened to go to the authorities and turn him in, he had laughed. “Go ahead. I’ll be happy to tell them how you forged my wife’s will. You might get out of jail in ten years or so, if you’re lucky. So why don’t you pack up your little panties and get the hell out of here before I throw you out!”
The lawyer stood there and stared at the man she had never really known until this very moment. “Oh, my God…your poor wife. What did you do to her?”
When she said that, something glittered behind his cold blue eyes, something chilling that made her blood run cold and scared her to death. She turned around and left. She got back in the car and drove out of town. But before she did, she’d made one stop at the cemetery.
On Mother’s Day, Dwayne Jr. was back up at Tot’s grave, drunk again, feeling sorry for himself, crying in his beer, wailing at her tombstone. “You damn crazy old woman. Why did you have to go and die on me, Momma? I loved you, and you didn’t leave me nothing. Not one damned cent. Goddamn you. I loved you, you Goddamn crazy old woman. I loved you. You should have bought me that motorcycle. It’s your fault I don’t have no money. Why’d you die and leave me? I loved you.”
Tot was not moved at these drunken confessions of love. When she had been alive, he had done nothing but steal her blind.
She told James that one day she’d come home, and he’d stolen her entire dining room set.
James said, “Damn. He got that from me. I used to steal from you. God and I hate a thief. Thank God I finally got sober. I owe my sanity to AA.”
“Good for you. I owe mine to the Pointer Sisters and disco.”
“Disco?”
“Yeah, I was way too old for it at the time, but I didn’t care. It saved my life. After you left me, I couldn’t stand to be alone. I hired a babysitter for Momma and the grandkids, and every Friday and Saturday night, I’d get off from work, put on my makeup, curl my hair, and head on out to Disco City. What a place. They had this big mirrored ball hanging over the dance floor, twirling and sparkling…whistles blowing, colored spotlights turning you blue and yellow and pink whirling around. Wow! Me and about twenty gay guys from Joplin, all wearing pink feather boas, dancing to ‘She Works Hard for the Money’ in our big platform shoes, all decked out in our bell bottoms and false eyelashes. I must have danced a thousand miles that year. It was great. Too bad you missed it.”
2014
When she was thirty, Norma had made a vow that when she hit sixty, she would stop dyeing her hair, but, of course, she hadn’t. Gray looked pretty good on other people. Macky looked great with it, but she didn’t. Her skin was too fair. She just looked old and washed out. She didn’t want old-looking teeth either, so she spent a small fortune getting a “smile makeover.” She now looked like an older woman with sixteen-year-old teeth.