214 Wills novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Page
Miles finds 214 wills in Callie's file drawer the day a car hits her, meets the man they name, and sees that today's will was witnessed an hour before the crash.
The day Callie was hit by a car, I found her wills.
Two hundred and fourteen of them, in a black binder at the back of her file drawer.
I was only looking for her insurance card.
The nurse at the desk had asked for it twice, and Callie was in surgery with a ruptured spleen and a broken leg.
A police officer had driven me home from the hospital for it. He waited in the lobby with her crushed purse.
On the way he had told me the driver never stopped.
A witness saw a gray sedan hit her at the corner and keep going.
There was no plate number yet, and no camera on that corner that worked.
The binder sat behind the tax folders.
The first page said Last Will and Testament, with her full name under it.
I thought it was a joke.
It was dated four years ago, on a Sunday.
I turned the page and found another one, dated the Sunday after.
Then another.
Every one was typed, signed in her careful loopy handwriting, and dated on a Sunday.
I counted them on the floor of our bedroom with my coat still on.
Two hundred and fourteen.
Every one left everything she owned to the same man.
Rob Garland, "my first love."
Her savings were in there. Her car. Her mother's ring. The apartment lease.
Not one of them mentioned me.
I had been sleeping next to this woman for four years.
I knew her coffee order, her mother's maiden name and which side of the bed she took.
I knew nothing about a first love.
She had never once said the name Rob.
My hands went cold, and I sat there with the binder in my lap.
Then my phone buzzed.
It was the nurse. "Mr. Ferren? We still need that card."
I found it in her wallet drawer and took the binder with me.
I do not know why I took it. I only knew I was not leaving it in an empty apartment.
The officer drove me back.
Callie's floor was quiet at that hour. The waiting room had a television on with the sound off.
A man stood in the hallway outside the surgery doors.
He was tall, with neat black hair and a navy suit, and he held two paper coffee cups.
He saw me and walked straight over.
"You must be Miles."
I had never seen him in my life.
"I'm Rob," he said. "Rob Garland. I'm so sorry. I came as soon as I heard."
He held out one of the coffees.
I looked at it and did not take it.
Nobody had called him. I had called her work and my own sister, and that was all.
I had not called a man whose name I had learned twenty minutes ago.
"Who told you?" I asked.
"The hospital called me." He said it smoothly, and he smiled kindly. "I'm on her emergency card."
A nurse came by, and Rob turned to her at once.
"Excuse me. Did they find her phone? She never goes anywhere without it."
"It was in pieces in the road, sir," the nurse said.
"Good," Rob said. Then he caught himself. "I mean, good that someone looked. Thank you."
He turned back to me and his face went gentle again.
"She'll be fine, Miles. She's the strongest person I know."
He sat down in the plastic chair beside the doors and crossed his ankle over his knee.
I stood where I was.
The binder was under my arm, and my thumb was on the corner of it.
I could have asked him right there. I could have thrown it at his chest.
I did not do either.
I sat down one chair away from him, opened the binder across my knees, and turned to the last page.
I wanted to see what Callie had written most recently.
The top sheet was dated today.
It was Sunday, and she had told me over breakfast that she was going to the gym.
I had kissed her on the forehead. I had told her I would bring home eggs.
The last will looked like all the others.
My eyes went to the bottom, where the witness line was.
Someone had signed it in blue ink.
T. Garland, 9:40 a.m.
A car had hit her at five past ten.
I read the time again.
Then I read the name.
Beside me, Rob took a slow sip of his coffee.
So I closed the binder, turned in my chair, and put the page in front of his face.
"You were with her this morning," I said. "She told me she was at the gym."
He looked at the page.
He did not look surprised.
"Miles," he said quietly. "Why don't we ask Callie when she wakes up?"
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