At the bottom lies something else: a savings bond portfolio long forgotten by everyone except, apparently, Mrs. Mercer and Harold Greer. Not enormous wealth, but enough, once matured and combined with the maintenance fund, to cover major repairs and perhaps even a year of tuition if handled carefully.
For a while, you just sit there amid the dust and paper and old loyalties, feeling the strange gravity of being trusted by someone who owed you money and instead left you architecture.
In the spring, the judge rules.
The will stands.
The children lose.
Gail leaves the courthouse furious and brittle. Thomas avoids your eyes. Neither speaks to you. Greer shakes your hand outside under a pale sky and says, “Congratulations. Also condolences. Inheritance is usually both.”
You move into the house that summer.
Not right away. First there is paperwork, repairs, inspections, tax filings, endless signatures. The roof does indeed leak in one corner. The porch rail is criminal. The upstairs smells like old paper and shut windows. But the bones are good, just as Mrs. Mercer said. Solid beneath neglect.
