The Recording That Silenced My Brother

Ferris stood once the recording finished and asked the court’s permission to enter one more piece of evidence, a banker’s box that had been sitting by his feet the entire hearing. Thirteen years of receipts, organized by month in the same plain handwriting I had used on the shoebox labels since I was twenty-three years old. Cardiology copays from Springfield. Property tax stubs with my name on the payment line and Goldia’s parcel number in the corner. A stack of canceled checks, twenty-two thousand dollars of them, made out to a construction supply company that no longer existed, each one signed in my grandmother’s own unsteady hand and dated in the eleven years my brother had described in his petition as her devoted, dutiful grandson.

The judge did not take long. She asked Cletis directly, under oath, whether the forty-seven thousand dollar figure was accurate. He said he’d need to check his records. She asked if he disputed that the money had been given to him and not repaid. He did not answer that question so much as he stopped answering questions at all, and looked instead at a spot on the wall above the bench, the way I imagine a man looks when he has finally run out of rooms to be the golden boy in.

“The petition to void the transfer is denied,” the judge said. “I find no evidence of incapacity and considerable evidence of premeditated, sound-minded intent on the part of the decedent. I would add, for the record, that this court does not often receive testimony this unambiguous from the person whose wishes are actually in dispute.”

Cletis left before the gavel had properly finished its sound. He did not look at me on his way out, and he has not called on a birthday or a Christmas since, which I understand now is the closest thing to an honest answer he has ever given me.