Jodi Thomas - Twisted Creek

The money was there.

I tried to go back to sleep. What if the five thousand was all there was? What if the property was worthless and I made a twelve-hour drive to find out I had nothing waiting?

Moonlight from a rip in the curtain shone across the living area and onto the kitchen counter. A roach crawled along the beam of light, searching for crumbs.

I laughed. What did I have to lose? I was going to Texas. There would be jobs there as well.

By dawn I was packed. We ate breakfast with the deposit slip still between us. I left at eight and drove to the nursery to turn in my uniform. The boss smirked at me, but I only told him to have a nice day and waved. I heard once that you should always be nice to people you dislike; it confuses them.

When I got back to the house, Nana was ready. A box of kitchen staples and her tattered suitcase waited by the door.

My grandmother wasn’t a collector and told me many times that the only thing of value in her life was me. We had no pictures or keepsakes from her past or my childhood. All she ever moved besides essentials were her Bible and her wind chime.

Like hopeful fools we loaded our belongings once more and left the key in the mailbox. The same bored girl at the bank counted out my money. I debated asking for it in ones, but settled on twenties. I left twenty dollars over what I’d used to pay bills so the account could stay open.

The teller blinked a smile as she handed me almost three thousand dollars.

I smiled back and walked out of the bank with more money than I’d ever had in cash.

It felt good.

I felt rich.

And I started to believe that maybe I really did have an Uncle Jefferson.

Twenty-four hours later, after driving all day and spending the night in a Motel 6, I was ready to meet the lawyer and inherit my property. I held my disposable coffee cup in one hand as I drove toward the offices of Garrison D. Walker, Attorney-at-Law.

“Maybe you knew Uncle Jefferson, Nana? Maybe he was a friend of your family from way back?” We’d played this game for a hundred miles with no luck.

Nana shook her head. She’d been a tenant farmer’s wife all her married life, and once my grandfather died she’d lived with me. She could count the number of people she’d called friend on her fingers. And as for Nana having a rich, secret lover hidden away somewhere, that was about as likely as magnolias in Alaska.

“I knew a Jeff once, but he went by the name of Red ’cause he had hair as red as an apple,” she mumbled around a donut. “He took me to a dance that summer I spent time in Texas. My mom sent me to stay with my brother Frank’s wife, who was expecting. She’d taken a summer house for one week when Dallas was burning up ’cause being big pregnant is hot on a body even in the winter. She drove up to Oklahoma and picked me up, then we wandered around the most nothing land until we found the place she’d rented.”

Nana smiled as the wind tickled through her short gray hair. “All the boys had been called up after Pearl Harbor. My mom wanted me to stay with Mary until school started. She weren’t but a year older than me.”

I remembered the story and didn’t want to hear the retelling of how Frank was killed in the war and his wife died in childbirth. “Tell me about this Red you met,” I encouraged.

Nana licked donut icing off her fingers. “He was real nice. We talked almost all night, every night that week. He was turning eighteen in the fall and couldn’t wait to join up.”

“Why didn’t you marry him?” I winked at her.

She laughed. “I was already engaged to your grandpa. My folks had promised we could marry as soon as I finished my eleventh year of school. They said your grandpa was solid on account of him being older than me and already a farmer.” She popped another donut and turned to look out her side window. “Some folks didn’t think so, but those men who stayed to farm did their part in the war, too.”

I frowned. If Nana didn’t have anyone in her past, it had to be me. But who?

I’d had my share of boyfriends in college, but most had wanted to borrow money from me, not keep in touch because they planned to name me in a will. Once I moved back home, I hadn’t known a single man in the county I wanted to have a cup of coffee with, much less get involved with romantically. When the few single guys my age did come around, they lost all interest as soon as they discovered Nana was part of the package.

Glancing at Nana, I smiled. She’d been a real help and didn’t even know it. A man who couldn’t love Nana, too, wasn’t worth having.

Nana refolded the map she’d been trying to get back in its original shape since Oklahoma City. She stuck it over the visor where I’d put the lawyer’s letter. Nana had read it aloud so many times during the trip, we could quote almost every line. She hummed as we passed through the streets of Lubbock.

This morning, we’d had our motel showers and hot coffee. It was time to meet with Garrison D. Walker and solve the mystery. I tried not to hope for anything. If the inheritance was nothing, we’d already had an adventure, and I could look for a job here as easy as I could have in Memphis.

I turned off of Avenue Q onto a tree-lined street named Broadway. Finding the lawyer had been no problem, thanks to the directions he’d left on the back of his letter. When I called to tell him we were coming, he sounded excited. Maybe he was glad to be rid of his responsibility with the will.

A very proper secretary welcomed us. She offered us a seat and disappeared through one of the mahogany doors behind her desk.

“Don’t say anything about not knowing Jefferson Platt,” I whispered to Nana, who was busy pulling the tag off the outfit I’d bought her at a Wal-Mart last night. I thought if I was going to inherit something we should look like we didn’t really need whatever it was. We’d found dresses for both of us for under a hundred dollars. Nana’s was navy, made to look like a suit with a white collar. Mine, a shift that buttoned down the front, was the pale blue of a summer day. Like everything I bought, it seemed a few inches too long, but we hadn’t had time to hem it.

“I won’t say a word,” Nana mumbled. “It’s not right to talk about the dead, dear.” She’d managed to pull the tag off, but the plastic string still dangled from her sleeve.

I think the world of my nana, but she is a woman far more comfortable in a housecoat than a suit. “All dressed up” to her meant taking off her apron. She helped me through those first two years of college by cooking at the elementary school a mile down from the farm my grandfather worked. She’d walked the distance every morning and cooked, then returned home to the full day’s work of a farmer’s wife without one word of complaint.

I covered her hand with mine, wishing for the millionth time that I could make things better for her. When you’ve only got one person who loves you, you have to wish extra hard.

“Miss Allison Daniels?” a man of about fifty asked as he neared.

I stood and shook his hand. “My friends call me Allie,” I said. “And this is my grandmother, Edna Daniels.”

“Garrison D. Walker, at your service.”

The lawyer smiled and waited for her to offer her hand. But Nana wasn’t about to let him see her plastic string, and he was too much a Southern gentlemen to offer his hand first to a lady.

Walker turned back to me. “We’ve had a hell of a time finding you, Miss Daniels.”

“I wasn’t aware I was lost.” I smiled, thinking Garrison Walker had too many teeth. “I didn’t know Uncle Jefferson was dead.” I knew I should be concentrating, but the man made me nervous. His grin looked like it belonged on a mouth one size larger.

“Your mother didn’t tell you Jefferson died?” Walker asked as he stopped grinning-thank goodness. “We sent her a registered letter the day of his graveside service. He’d listed her phone number and address as the only person to be notified.” Walker paused as if expecting me to fill in a blank. When I didn’t, he added, “Quite frankly, I was surprised when Mr. Platt named you his only heir. I told your mother to let you know of his passing since we had no address on you.”

“Maybe my mother had trouble reaching me. She’s out of the country a great deal,” I managed to mumble as I remembered the string of men who always stood beside her in pictures. She’d send us snapshots from all over the world with little notes on the back like, “Walter and I in Rome,” or “Me and Charles-Paris.” I’d decided years ago that in her odd way she thought she was sharing with us by sending photos. No gifts or calls, just pictures of her and strangers.

“How long ago did he die?” I’d made a point that every time we moved I called and left a message on my mother’s machine. She could have found me, but I didn’t feel like going into family problems with Garrison Walker.

“Almost two months.” Walker lowered his head and sighed. “He had a long life though, dying at the age of eighty-three.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Walker was pretending to care. But the information was helpful. His age eliminated any possibility of Jefferson being my father, unless he played football in high school during his fifties.

Walker continued, “Your mother said to send all information to her, and she’d forward it to you, but I’ve been in family law long enough to know to deal directly with the source. Since you are not a minor, I had to locate you.”

Nana found her voice. “Did you hire a P.I. to find Allie?” She loved detective shows. She even told me once that she’d leave my grandpa if McGyver ever came by the farm.

Walker smiled as if talking to a child. “No. When I realized weeks had passed, I went online. I had your legal name and county in which you were born. Within fifteen minutes I’d located your current place of employment.”

“Former employment,” I corrected without explanation. The man could probably piece together my whole life from what he’d learned on the Internet. Places of employment, changes in addresses. Going-nowhere jobs.

To my surprise, Walker looked embarrassed. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you standing. If you’ll step into my office, I’ll need you to sign a few papers, and then the keys are yours. I’m afraid the only money he left was to cover our fees and for your traveling expenses.”

He paused as if expecting me to question him.

I shrugged. I hadn’t expected anything, so Walker’s news wasn’t disappointing. The idea that I had the keys to something I owned, other than my van, was a foreign concept to me.

The lawyer glanced around the empty waiting area as if wishing for clients to appear. “Would you like me to drive you out? I could work it into my schedule.”

“No thanks. I’ve got a map.” Something in the way Walker stared at me gave me the creeps. Mixed signals were bouncing off him. I found myself thinking a little less of Uncle Jefferson for picking him to handle the will. If it’s possible to think less of someone you don’t know.

Walking to the van a few minutes later, I tried to forget about the lawyer. I had the keys. I could leave his problems in his office. They weren’t in my bag of worries.

“Did you notice?” Nana whispered. “That lawyer had wobble eyes.”

Laughing, I had to ask, “What are wobble eyes?” Nana thought she could tell anything from a person’s eyes and most of the time she was right. She told me once that she had Gypsy blood on her mother’s side and Gypsies are all born with a gift for something.

“The lawyer’s eyes wobbled between caring and disliking, maybe even hating. I’ve seen it before a few times in salesmen who used to come around. They’d do their talking, swearing they had one hand on the Bible, but the other would be trying to get into your pocket.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “I don’t like him.”

And that was it, I knew. Nana wouldn’t be changing her mind. “Well,” I consoled, “we’ll probably never see him again.” Cross my heart, I almost added out loud. “We got the keys.”

We drove out of Lubbock, Texas, giggling. Keys! I had keys to my very own place. Some man I never knew, in a place where I’d never been, had left me a house I never even knew existed. Maybe he got my name mixed up with someone else. Maybe he met my mother and figured I was overdue for a break. Maybe he picked me out of the phone book.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t care. If the place was run down and in need of paint, we could fix it up, and what was left of the five thousand would keep us going until I found a job. I had half a degree and a ton of experience doing everything from retail to bookkeeping. I’d find something to keep food on the table. After all, we already had a roof.