A Paper Plate at My Own Table novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Tin Box
The post passed sixty thousand views before Timothy had his boots on.
He turned the phone face down on the counter.
"Let her have the morning," he said. "She'll be sorry by lunch."
"Timothy, she called you the help to sixty thousand people."
"I know what she called me. I've got something to show you that's worth more than her post."
We went out to the garage in the first gray light, before Norma woke.
Timothy's father had built the workshop on the back of the garage in the nineties.
It still smelled of cedar and machine oil.
A pegboard of tools hung on the wall, each outlined in black marker.
"He drew around every one so he'd know when somebody borrowed it," Timothy said. "Nobody ever did."
He knelt by the workbench and pulled a gray tin box from behind a paint can.
It was flat, scratched, the size of a shoebox.
He set it on the bench between us.
"I said I'd wait for you," he said.
"You did not."
"I thought about it."
I almost smiled.
Nothing about the house in bed, I thought. We weren't in bed.
He lifted the lid.
On top lay a long cream envelope.
In square pencil capitals, it said: *TIMOTHY.*
Timothy picked it up and held it for a long time.
"Do you want me to leave?" I asked.
"No."
He slit it with his thumbnail and took out one sheet of lined paper, folded in thirds.
He read it standing up.
I watched his face, and I watched it change a little at a time.
"Out loud," I said gently.
He cleared his throat.
"Timothy. If you are reading this, I am gone, and Norma has not told you what I did. I have left the house on Ashby Ford Road to you. It was my father's, and his father's. Norma may live in it as long as she wants. It is yours to keep, and it is not hers to sell. I kept this from Norma because she would have made me change it. I should have told you to your face. Forgive me. Dad."
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