While arranging her funeral, I found a handwritten note.
It was in her desk. In the little room off the kitchen she used as an office. In the top drawer. In an envelope. With my name on the front.
Susan.
Inside, on her lavender stationery, in her neat, slanted, home-ec-teacher handwriting:
Susan,
When Mr. Feldman reads my will, please make sure Ethan is there.
He won’t want to come. Make him.
Tell him I said so. Use my teacher voice. You know the one.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Don’t let Glenn talk you out of it.
I read it three times.
Don’t let Glenn talk you out of it.
Why would Glenn try to talk me out of it?
I thought she’d probably left Ethan a little money. A few thousand dollars. Maybe Dad’s tools. Maybe the peacoat.
That would be like her.
So I tracked him down.
It took me three days.
He wasn’t at the bookstore on Queen Street. Somebody had boarded up the alcove. There was a NO TRESPASSING sign.
I went to the shelter on South Prince Street. They hadn’t seen him.
I went to the soup kitchen at St. James. A volunteer named Doris said he’d been there for lunch on Tuesday. She said he looked terrible.
I went to the public library on Duke Street.
He was there.
In the back. At a table in the reference section. With the navy blue scarf Mom knitted wrapped around his neck. Reading.
Little Women.
I sat down across from him.
He looked up. He didn’t seem surprised.
“Susan,” he said.
“I’ve been looking for you for three days.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where have you been sleeping?”
He didn’t answer.
“Ethan.”
“Under the King Street bridge,” he said. “They closed the bookstore.”
I looked at the book in his hands.
“She read that every December,” I said.
“I know,” Ethan said. “She told me. She read it to me. Last year. Out loud. On Thursdays.” He swallowed. “She got to the part where Beth dies and she couldn’t finish. She cried too hard.”
He closed the book.
“I wanted to know how it ends,” he said.
“The reading of her will is Tuesday,” I said. “At two o’clock. Mr. Feldman’s office. On East King Street.”
Ethan shook his head.
“That’s for family.”
“She asked for you.”
“Susan—”
“She left a note,” I said. “She said, He won’t want to come. Make him. Use my teacher voice.”
Ethan almost laughed. It came out broken.
“She did not.”
I took out the note. I slid it across the table.
He read it.
He put his hand over his mouth.
“Use my teacher voice,” he whispered.
“Will you come?”
He looked at the note for a long time.
Then he looked at me.
“Do I have to wear a tie?” he asked.
He arrived at the lawyer’s office wearing a borrowed jacket.
Navy blue. Wool. Two sizes too big. It hung on his shoulders. The sleeves came down past his wrists.
He’d borrowed it from Doris at the soup kitchen. It was her late husband’s.
He’d shaved. He’d combed his hair. He was wearing the navy blue scarf.
And he was clutching the same worn green backpack. With the duct tape on the strap.
He stood in the doorway of Mr. Feldman’s conference room like he was afraid somebody was going to tell him to leave.
My brother looked furious.
Glenn was sitting at the conference table next to his wife, Patricia. In a gray suit. A Rolex. His reading glasses pushed up on his head.
He’s forty-nine. Three years younger than me. He owns Kemper Construction in Lititz. Forty employees. Big houses. Commercial buildings. He’s done well.
He saw Ethan in the doorway.
His face went red.
Then white.
“Why is he here?” Glenn said.
“Because Mom wanted him here,” I said.
“Mom wanted a homeless guy at the reading of her will?”
“She left a note,” I said. “She asked for him specifically.”
Glenn stood up.
“This is a family matter,” he said. “He’s not family.”
Ethan flinched.
I’d never seen him flinch before. Not at Glenn’s stares at the birthday party. Not when I asked him what he wanted from my mother. Not when he told me he’d spent his last twelve dollars on roses.
But he flinched at he’s not family.
“Glenn,” I said. “Sit down.”
Mr. Feldman cleared his throat.
He’s seventy-four. White hair. Bow tie. He’d been my parents’ lawyer since 1981. He’d handled Dad’s will. He’d handled the house.
“Mr. Kemper,” he said to Glenn. “Your mother was very specific. She asked that Mr. Lowell be present.”
Mr. Lowell.
I’d never heard Ethan’s last name.
Glenn went very still.
“What did you say?” he said.
“Mr. Lowell,” Mr. Feldman said again. He gestured at Ethan. “Ethan Lowell. Your mother asked that he be here.”
Glenn stared at Ethan.
He sat back down.
Slowly.
Like his legs had stopped working.
I didn’t understand.
I looked at Glenn. His face had gone gray. His hands were flat on the conference table. Patricia was looking at him.
“Glenn?” she said. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer.
Ethan sat down. In a leather chair at the end of the table. As far from Glenn as possible.
He put his backpack on the floor between his feet.
He folded his hands in his lap.
He didn’t look at anybody.
The lawyer opened a thick folder.
He read through the usual inheritance arrangements.
My mother’s savings. Split between me and Glenn. Her car, a 2008 Buick with forty-one thousand miles, to Claire. Her jewelry to me. Her sewing machine and fabric to Claire. Dad’s watch to Glenn’s oldest son. Dad’s fishing rods to Glenn’s youngest.
Small bequests. Five hundred dollars to St. Anthony’s. Five hundred to the Lancaster Public Library. Two hundred and fifty to the soup kitchen at St. James.
The usual things.
Glenn didn’t move. He was staring at the table.
Then Mr. Feldman stopped.
He took off his reading glasses.
“The house,” he said.
“Your mother made a change to her will,” Mr. Feldman said. “On October third. Of last year. Regarding the house on Chestnut Street.”
I looked at Glenn. He didn’t look up.
“Her previous will,” Mr. Feldman said, “left the house to be sold and the proceeds divided equally between Susan and Glenn.”
He turned a page.
“Her current will,” he said, “leaves the house at 418 Chestnut Street, and all its contents not otherwise specified, to Ethan Lowell.”
The room was silent.
I looked at Ethan.
He hadn’t moved. He was staring at his hands.
“What?” Patricia said.
Mr. Feldman read it again. Slowly.
“I leave my home at 418 Chestnut Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, together with all furnishings and contents not otherwise bequeathed, including my husband Edwin’s tools, to Ethan Lowell. So he will always have somewhere to come home to.”
Glenn didn’t say anything.
That was the strangest part.
My brother, who’d argued with Mom for two years about the stupid homeless kid. Who’d stared at Ethan through her whole birthday party. Who’d said he’s not family not ten minutes earlier.
He just sat there. Staring at the table. Gray-faced.
He didn’t say anything at all.
“There’s one final instruction,” Mr. Feldman said. “Concerning Ethan.”
Ethan lowered his eyes.
Mr. Feldman reached beneath his desk.
He produced a small wooden box.
It was about the size of a shoebox. Dark wood. Walnut, maybe. Old. With brass corners and a brass latch. A little keyhole.
I knew that box.
I’d seen it my whole childhood. On the top shelf of my father’s closet. Behind his hats.
Dad’s box.
He called it his important things box. Glenn and I weren’t allowed to touch it. We used to dare each other to climb up and look inside. We never did.
After Dad died, I’d assumed Mom threw it away. Or put it in the attic.
