The Night They Dumped My Boxes

The lawyer

The voice on the other end was old, and careful, and it sounded like a man who did not enjoy making phone calls.

“Is this Margaret Colvin?” he said. “Ada Colvin’s granddaughter?”

“This is Meg,” I said. “Yes.”

“My name is Harlan Voss,” he said. “I’m an attorney. I drew up your grandmother’s will, Miss Colvin. And I’ve been trying to reach you for a long time.”

I sat down at my kitchen table. Ada had been gone for eight years. I had signed nothing, been called to no reading, seen no paper with her name on it since the funeral. My mother had handled all of it. That was the story. There had been nothing to handle.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “My mother settled my grandmother’s estate. Years ago. There wasn’t anything. She told us there wasn’t anything left.”

There was a long silence on the line. I could hear him breathing, choosing his words.

“Miss Colvin,” he said finally, “I think you had better come see me. There are some things your grandmother wanted you to have, and I have been holding them for eight years, waiting for the day you were ready. I have a feeling that day is about here.”

He gave me the address. It was two hours north, in the town where Ada grew up, above a closed insurance agency on the main street. I did not sleep that night. I sat up with the tea gone cold and my grandmother’s muddy face on the counter and my father’s voice going around and around in my head. You’ve always been a failure.