The Maple Street Diner opens at six on Saturdays. I got there at 8:40 because I couldn’t sleep, and because mail carriers are never late. I ordered coffee I didn’t drink.
Ashley came in at 8:55. She had her hair pulled back, no makeup, and her eyes were puffy. She looked like she hadn’t slept either. She slid into the booth across from me and set a manila folder on the table between us.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you would.”
“My daughter asked me to,” I said. “Not in so many words. But she did.”
Ashley nodded and looked down at the table.
“I need to say something first,” she said. “Before anything else. I’m sorry, Mrs. Pruitt. I’m sorry I never came to your house. I’m sorry I let Nick tell me who you were instead of finding out myself. Every afternoon those kids came home from your porch smelling like peanut butter and talking about you, and I told myself they were just little kids who didn’t understand grown-up things.” She swallowed hard. “They understood fine. I’m the one who didn’t.”
“Call me Roxanne,” I said.
She looked up.
“Roxanne.” She almost smiled. Then she opened the folder.
Inside were printouts from Tri-County Federal Credit Union, with the full payment history on the Heartland loan. There was a current appraisal on the house, dated three weeks earlier and done by a man named Curtis Lowe. It valued the house at $246,000. The remaining mortgage balance was $71,800.
“That’s more than a hundred and seventy thousand dollars in equity,” Ashley said quietly. “Dana showed me how it works. A lot of that is the market going up. But fifty-two thousand of it is you. If you hadn’t made that payment, the house might have gone into foreclosure that first year. Nick was four months behind by the time the life insurance came through. Dana said Heartland’s records show they’d already sent him a notice of default.”
“He never told me it was that bad,” I said.
“He never told me any of it.” Ashley pressed her lips together. “When I asked him about the refinance, he said we’d built all that equity ourselves, him and Kelsey, and then him alone. I believed that too.”
The waitress came over. Ashley ordered coffee and didn’t drink hers either.
“I talked to Dana again on Thursday,” Ashley said. “On my lunch break, without Nick. I asked her what it would take to refinance the house and take out enough cash to pay you back. All of it. The fifty-two thousand.”
I stared at her.
“Ashley, I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking,” she said. “I’m telling you that’s what I want. Dana says with the equity in the house and our two incomes, we qualify easily. The new payment would be about $1,140 a month instead of $910. Higher, but we can afford it. I make $38,000 a year at Dr. Hammond’s. Nick makes almost seventy with overtime. We’ll be fine.”
“And Nick?”
Ashley’s face went very still.
“That’s the part I’m scared of,” she said. “His name’s on the house. I can’t refinance without him. And I don’t know what he’s going to say when I tell him what I found.”
“Can I tell you something about Nick?” I said.
Ashley nodded.
“For almost three years, I listened to that man cry in the garage. Two or three nights a week, at first. He never knew I heard. He’d wait until he thought everybody was asleep, and then he’d go out there and sit in Kelsey’s car, she drove a little blue Honda, and he’d cry like his heart was being pulled out through his ribs.” I wrapped my hands around my coffee cup. “He’s not a bad man, honey. He’s a man who got hit by a truck he never saw coming, and he’s been trying to crawl out from under it ever since. When he called my money rent, I don’t think he was trying to cheat me. I think he couldn’t stand owing me. Every time he looked at me, he saw her, and he saw how much he’d needed help, and I think it made him feel like half a man.”
Ashley’s eyes filled.
“So he told you I was a monster,” I said gently. “Because if I was a monster, he didn’t owe me anything. And if he didn’t owe me anything, he could start over clean.”
“That’s not fair to you,” Ashley whispered.
“No. It isn’t.” I set my cup down. “But it’s grief. Grief isn’t fair. It makes good people tell lies they’d never tell on a normal Tuesday.”
Ashley wiped her eyes with a diner napkin.
“There’s something else,” she said. “Something I didn’t put in the letter.”
She reached into the folder and pulled out one more sheet. It was a photocopy of a will, three pages, from the law office of Herman and Doyle, Attorneys at Law, Millbrook. The Last Will and Testament of Kelsey Ann Bauer.
“It was in the shoebox too,” she said. “Article Four. Guardianship.”
I read it.
“In the event that my husband, Nicholas J. Bauer, predeceases me or is unable or unwilling to serve as guardian of my minor children, I nominate my mother, Roxanne M. Pruitt, to serve as guardian of the person and estate of my minor children.”
“She named me,” I said. “If something happened to both of them.”
“She named you,” Ashley said. “And last month Nick and I went to a lawyer to update our wills, because we just got married. Nick named his brother Dale Jr. as guardian. In Montana. The kids have met him twice.” She took a breath. “He didn’t even mention your name. When I asked about you, he said you were too old.”
Too old. I was sixty.
I sat back in the booth and looked out the window at Maple Street, where the leaves were blowing across the sidewalk in orange drifts.
“What do you want to do, Roxanne?” Ashley asked. “I’ll back you up, whatever it is. If you want to get a lawyer and go after the money, I’ll testify that I saw the wire. I’ll give them the payment history.”
I thought about it. I’d thought about it a hundred times, lying awake on Third Street. Before I signed the lease, I’d even made an appointment with an elder law attorney in the county seat, a woman named Marjorie Kline. She charged me $150 for one hour and listened to the whole story without interrupting.
“Mrs. Pruitt, you could bring a claim,” she’d said when I finished. “Unjust enrichment. You conferred a benefit, he knew about it, and it would be unfair for him to keep it without paying. You have the wire record, and that helps. But I’ll be honest with you. Without a written agreement, it comes down to what he says versus what you say. He’ll say it was a gift, or rent. A judge might believe you. A judge might not. And the attorney’s fees could run ten, fifteen thousand dollars before you see a courtroom.”
“And the kids?” I’d asked her. “What happens to the kids if I sue their father?”
Marjorie Kline had put down her pen.
“Legally? Nothing. Practically?” She shook her head. “Practically, Mrs. Pruitt, he controls whether you see them. Grandparents don’t have very strong visitation rights in this state when the parent objects. You could win the money and lose those children.”
So I’d walked out of her office and signed a lease by a bus stop instead.
“I don’t want to sue anybody,” I told Ashley. “I never did. I just want my grandbabies. And I want Nick to stop pretending I was never there.”
Ashley reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
“Then let’s go tell him,” she said. “Together.”
