Chapter 13: What Wilma Saw

I sat down on the cot.

It was the only other place in the room to sit.

"Tell me," I said. "All of it."

Wilma folded her reading glasses closed, then opened them again.

"The week we buried him. The Thursday. You were in bed at the big house with the curtains shut."

I remembered the curtains. I didn't remember Thursday.

"Brantley came in here that morning in a black suit. He sat down in this chair."

"Daddy's chair."

"I told him it was your daddy's chair. He said your daddy didn't need it anymore."

My hands went cold.

"He said you'd asked him to handle the bank. He shut that door and made a phone call."

She pointed at the old fax machine on the filing cabinet.

"The estate account still had this office's address on it. That afternoon the bank faxed us a copy of a transfer form."

"How much?"

"Three hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Out of your daddy's account. Into Talmadge Riverside LLC."

The company whose card had paid for Unit 114 for seven months.

"Who signed it?"

"Your name was on the line. It looked like your handwriting from across a room."

"I never signed a transfer in my life."

"I know that now, honey. I didn't know it then."

She pressed her hands together in her lap.

"I called him. He said you'd signed it at the kitchen table. A loan to his company, to get through a bad quarter."

"And you believed him."

"He said you couldn't stand to hear the word money that week. He said, Wilma, please don't put this on her right now."

"So you didn't."

"I didn't."

"For five years."

"You came to my house every Christmas," I said. "You sat at my table. You watched him carve the turkey."

"I watched him every time."

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