- “Henrietta found a letter,” Rosella said. “In the trunk. From Horace to Amos. Dated January of 1931.”
- She reached into her cardigan pocket.
- She took out a piece of paper. Folded. A photocopy.
- She unfolded it. She put it on the table in front of me.
- Old handwriting. Slanted. Faded. Hard to read.
- Amos —
- The Whitsett n— won’t sell. Says it’s his granddaddy’s land and he’ll die on it. I’ve raised his assessment. He can’t pay it. It’ll go on the steps in March. Be there with forty dollars. Nobody else will bid.
- — H.
- I couldn’t look at it.
- I turned it over.
- “Henrietta read that letter,” Rosella said, “and she didn’t speak for a week. Not even at bridge. She just sat there with her cards.”
- She put the letter back in her pocket.
- “Then she called her lawyer,” Rosella said. “In Nashville. A woman named Patricia Odom. Not the family lawyer. Not the one the boys use. Her own.”
- “She asked me your middle name,” I said slowly. “At Christmas. Over coffee. She wrote it on a napkin.”
- “She wanted it exact,” Rosella said. “On the deed. She said, If I’m going to give it back, Rosella, I’m going to spell her name right. Somebody in this family spelled a Whitsett name wrong on purpose once. On a tax bill. I won’t do it again.”
- “When?” I said. “When did she sign it?”
- Rosella turned to the next page.
- At the bottom. Signatures.
- Henrietta Caldwell Lockridge.
- Shaky. Old. But clear.
- Witnessed: Patricia A. Odom, Attorney at Law.
- Witnessed: Carlton A. Lockridge.
- Notarized: Rosella M. Haynes, Notary Public.
- Recorded: April 11.
- I stared at it.
- Carlton A. Lockridge.
- “Carlton,” I whispered.
- “Carlton drove her,” Rosella said. “From the farm. In April. He carried her walker up those courthouse steps. He sat right there.”
- She pointed at the chair next to mine.
- “He signed as a witness,” she said. “He read every word. The tax sale. The letter. Isaac Whitsett.”
- She looked at me.
- “He cried, Elnora,” she said. “Sixty-eight years old. A retired banker. He sat in that chair and cried like a little boy.”
- I sat there.
- Mother’s gone. We won’t be needing you.
- He didn’t even ask me in.
- “Why?” I said. “Why would he—at the back door. With the check. We won’t be needing you. Why would he do that if he knew?”
- Rosella looked at me for a long time.
- “Did you look behind him?” she said. “In the kitchen?”
- I thought about it.
- Thurston and Bertram. Leaning on the counter. Drinking out of her good china.
- Thurston with his boots on her chair.
- Bertram laughing.
- “His brothers,” I said.
- “His brothers,” Rosella said. “Who didn’t know. Who still don’t know. Not yet.”
- She leaned forward.
- “Elnora,” she said. “Thurston has a contract. With a development company out of Franklin. To sell the whole Lockridge farm. Three hundred acres. For a subdivision. Four hundred houses. They’re calling it Pecan Hollow.”
- I put my hand over my mouth.
- “He signed it in July,” Rosella said. “Before Henrietta passed. Contingent on her death. He was so sure he’d inherit.”
- She tapped the deed book.
- “The contract’s for three hundred acres,” she said. “Including the thirty-eight with road frontage. The thirty-eight with the pecan grove. Where they were going to put the entrance and the clubhouse.”
- She looked at me.
- “Those thirty-eight acres,” she said, “haven’t been Lockridge land since April.”
- “If Thurston had seen you at that house,” Rosella said, “the morning after the funeral, packing up Henrietta’s things, he’d have asked you about the tenant house. He’d have told you to clear out of the lane. He’d have had a lawyer at your door that afternoon.”
- She shook her head.
- “Carlton was getting you away from them,” she said. “Before they figured it out.”
- I looked down at my pocketbook.
- I opened it.
- I took out the check.
- Three hundred dollars.
- Signed Carlton A. Lockridge.
- I turned it over.
- On the back, where you endorse it, there was something written. In pencil. Very small. In the corner. I’d never looked at the back.
- Don’t cash this. Go see Rosella. — C.
- I drove home with that deed book’s copy on the seat beside me.
- Rosella made me a certified copy. With a raised seal. It cost twelve dollars. She wouldn’t let me pay.
- “Henrietta paid in advance,” she said. “In April. She said, She won’t have twelve dollars that day, Rosella. Trust me.”
- I didn’t cry this time.
- I drove slow. Eight miles under the limit. With both hands on the wheel.
- The deed on the passenger seat.
- And the check with the pencil on the back.
- I didn’t go home.
- I went to the Hampshire Pike.
- I turned in at the Lockridge gate. I drove past the big white farmhouse on the rise. Thurston’s Range Rover was in the circle drive. And Bertram’s Cadillac.
- I didn’t stop.
- I drove down the gravel lane. Past the barn. Past the pond.
- Down where the land dips toward the creek.
- To the little white tenant house.
- Nobody had lived in it since Mama died in 1992. Mrs. Lockridge kept it up. She had the roof redone in 2010. Painted the porch. Kept the power on. Every Friday, after our coffee, she’d send me down the lane to open the windows and air it out.
- Keep it ready, Elnora, she’d say.
- I thought she was just being particular.
- I parked in front of it.
- I got out.
- I walked up the porch steps. The third one still creaks. It creaked when I was a girl.
- I sat down on the swing.
- The pecans were coming in. September. The trees were heavy with them. Green husks splitting open. Brown nuts dropping in the grass.
- Forty-one trees.
- Isaac Whitsett planted some of them. Mama told me that. She said her granddaddy planted the first row by the creek in 1885. With seedlings he walked to Nashville to buy.
- I never knew he owned the ground he planted them in.
- I sat on that swing.
- The chains creaked.
- I looked out at the pecan grove.
- At thirty-eight acres of land.
- Mine.
- No.
- Not mine.
- This land is not a gift. It is a return.
- Isaac’s.
- Odessa’s.
- Ruth Anne’s.
- Mine.
- Alfreda’s.
- Ours.
- I was still on the swing at four o’clock when the Range Rover came down the lane.
- Fast. Gravel spitting. Thurston at the wheel. Bertram in the passenger seat.
- It skidded to a stop behind my Buick.
- Thurston got out.
- His face was red.
- He was holding a phone.
- “Elnora!”
- I didn’t get up.
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