I got up.
I put on my good dress. The navy blue one with the white collar. The one I wore to Clarence’s funeral and Mama’s funeral and Mrs. Lockridge’s funeral.
I put on my good shoes.
I put my driver’s license in my pocketbook.
I took the check off the refrigerator. I don’t know why. I put it in my pocketbook too.

The Maury County Courthouse is in the middle of the square in Columbia. Big. Brick and stone. A clock tower. Built in 1904.
When I was a girl, there was a water fountain on the second floor with a sign over it.
It’s gone now. They took it out in 1965. But I remember where it was.
I always look at the spot when I walk past.

The register of deeds is on the first floor. Down a long hallway. A wooden counter. Shelves behind it. Floor to ceiling. Full of big books.
Rosella was waiting at the counter.

She was about my age. Seventy, maybe. White. Small. Silver hair in a neat bun. A cardigan. Glasses on a beaded chain around her neck.
She saw me come in.
She took off her glasses.
“You’re Elnora,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”

She looked at me for a long time.
“I played bridge with Henrietta every Tuesday for forty years,” she said.
I didn’t know that.
“Every Tuesday,” Rosella said. “At her house. Four of us. Me and Henrietta and Lucille Bryant and Margaret Haynes. Lucille passed in 2018. Margaret’s in the nursing home on Hatcher Lane. It was just me and Henrietta the last few years. We played gin rummy instead.”
She smiled. A small, sad smile.
“She cheated,” she said.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
“She did,” I said. “She cheated at checkers too.”

Rosella stopped smiling.
“She made me promise,” she said quietly. “Back in the spring. She made me promise I’d be the one to call you.”

She walked me back.
Past the counter. Past the shelves. Into a room in the back. With long tables. Wooden. Old. Scarred from a hundred years of elbows.
On one of the tables, there was a book.

QUITCLAIM DEED
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS, that HENRIETTA CALDWELL LOCKRIDGE, a widow, of Maury County, Tennessee, hereinafter called Grantor, for and in consideration of the sum of ONE DOLLAR ($1.00) and other good and valuable consideration, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, does hereby REMISE, RELEASE, AND FOREVER QUITCLAIM unto

all of Grantor’s right, title, and interest in and to the following described real property:
That certain tract or parcel of land lying and being in the Fifth Civil District of Maury County, Tennessee, on the south side of the Hampshire Pike, containing THIRTY-EIGHT (38) ACRES, more or less, including the dwelling house commonly known as the Tenant House, the pecan orchard, and all improvements thereon, being more particularly described as follows…

There was a legal description.
Metes and bounds. Beginning at an iron pin on the south margin of the Hampshire Pike, thence South 14 degrees East 1,240 feet to a stone in the creek…
I couldn’t read it. The numbers swam.

I skipped down.
To the bottom of the page.
To a paragraph that was different from the rest.
Not typed like the legal part. Typed separately. Like somebody had added it on purpose.

This conveyance is made in recognition of the following:
That said tract was owned in fee simple by ISAAC WHITSETT, great-grandfather of the Grantee, from 1879 until 1931, having been purchased by him with his own labor;
That said tract was acquired by AMOS LOCKRIDGE, father-in-law of the Grantor, at a tax sale on the courthouse steps on March 2, 1931, for the sum of Forty-Two Dollars, after the Whitsett family was prevented from paying said taxes by circumstances the Grantor believes were not of their own making;
That the Whitsett family thereafter remained on said tract as tenants and laborers of the Lockridge family for ninety-three years without wages commensurate with their labor;
And that the Grantor wishes, before her death, to return to the Whitsett family that which was taken from it.

I sat down.
There was a chair. Rosella must have pulled it out. I don’t remember.
I sat down at that long scarred table in the back room of the Maury County register of deeds.
And I put my hands flat on that big red book.
And I cried.

When I could talk, I said, “Isaac Whitsett.”
“Yes, honey.”
“That was Mama’s granddaddy,” I said. “My great-granddaddy. I never knew him. He died before Mama was born. Mama said he was a hard man. She said he lost everything in the Depression.”
I looked at the page.
“Mama said he lost everything,” I said again. “She never said where.”

Rosella sat down across from me.
“Henrietta found it,” she said quietly. “Two years ago. In 2023. In a trunk in the attic of the farmhouse. Old Amos’s papers. Ledgers. Receipts. Letters.”
She took off her glasses.
“She called me,” she said. “On a Tuesday. Before bridge. She said, Rosella, I need you to look something up for me. In the old deed books. 1931.”

“I found it,” Rosella said. “Deed Book 287. A tax sale. March 2, 1931. Thirty-eight acres on the Hampshire Pike. Owner of record, Isaac Whitsett. Purchaser, Amos Lockridge. Forty-two dollars.”
She shook her head.
“Henrietta came down here herself,” she said. “Ninety-two years old. With a walker. She sat right where you’re sitting. She read it.”
“What did she say?”

Rosella was quiet for a long time.
“She didn’t say anything for a while,” she said. “Then she asked me to go get her the tax records. From 1930. Before the sale.”
She looked at me.
“Isaac Whitsett had paid his taxes,” Rosella said. “In 1930. In full. There was a receipt. In the county collector’s book. Signed by the collector.”
I stared at her.
“Then how—”
“The 1931 assessment,” Rosella said, “was raised. On just his land. Just his. Tripled. In one year. Nobody else on the Hampshire Pike had their taxes raised that year.”
She swallowed.
“The county collector in 1931,” she said, “was a man named Horace Lockridge.”

I Cleaned an Elderly Woman’s House for 26 Years, but After Her Funeral, Her Son Fired Me and Handed Me $300

PART 5