He Chose Mistress, I Chose Empire novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: Build It Bigger

I sat down on the attic floor with the flashlight in my lap and opened it.

One sheet of yellow legal paper, folded in thirds. His square print, pressed hard.

Haddie girl,

Brantley came by the office Tuesday and asked me to sell him the lot. That's twice now.

I told him no. Then he asked if I'd talk you into it someday, after I'm gone.

I didn't like the way he said after.

I'm not writing to tell you who to love. You never listened to me about boys and I don't expect you to start.

I'm writing it down so it's on paper. The lot, the building and the trucks are yours. Not anybody's you marry.

Truck Four's spare key is taped under the drawer that sticks. In case you ever want to drive again.

Don't keep it the size I kept it.

Daddy

I read it three times.

Then I sat in the dark with the flashlight pointed at the rafters.

After a while Wilma called up the stairs to ask if I'd fallen through the ceiling.

I came down and handed it to her.

She read it standing in the empty upstairs hall.

When she finished, she took off her glasses and pressed her fingers against her eyes.

"He wrote it on my legal pad," she said. "I wondered where that page went."

That night I sat at his desk and pulled out the drawer that sticks, all the way out of its runners.

I turned it over.

A key was taped to the underside with masking tape gone yellow and brittle.

A Kenworth key, on a ring with a red plastic tag. TRUCK 4.

Wilma had sold Truck Four three years ago, when we got down to two.

I'd been sleeping two feet from that key since October.

I put it on my own key ring and didn't take it off.

On the first warm Saturday in April, six new trucks came up the river road in a line.

Not used. New. White, with KITT MOVING & STORAGE in red letters on both sides.

Under it was the phone number my father picked the year he started.

The health system's first payment had cleared on Wednesday.

My crew stood along the loading dock and counted them in out loud.

"Seven. Eight. Nine."

"Twelve," Wilma said, when the last one parked. "Twelve trucks. We haven't had twelve since your daddy's knees went."

"We'll have more by summer," I said.

"Lord help us."

At noon a man from the bankruptcy court came to the gate with an envelope for me.

Talmadge Landing's lot, next door. Four acres of weeds behind a construction fence.

A sign still stood at the corner with a drawing of a glass tower on it.

The court had sold it at auction in March to pay Brantley's investors back.

Kitt had bid. Kitt had won.

I signed for the deed on the hood of Truck Eleven.

Then I handed my youngest mover a can of red spray paint.

He walked over to the construction fence and painted out the tower.

Next to it, in letters a little crooked, he wrote KITT WAREHOUSE TWO.

The whole crew cheered.

At three I called everybody into the front office.

Wilma came last, wiping her hands on a rag, complaining about the coffee.

On my father's desk sat a new brass nameplate I'd ordered in February and hidden in the supply closet.

WILMA SHRUM. PRESIDENT.

She stopped in the doorway.

"What's that?"

"That's you."

"President of what?"

"Kitt. I own it. You run it. You've been running it for thirty years and never once got the title."

"Honey, I'm sixty-one years old."

"Then you've got experience."

She picked the nameplate up and held it in both hands, the way she'd held her keys the night she tried to quit.

The crew started clapping. She told them to stop. They didn't.

"Fine," she said finally. "But I'm not sitting in his chair."

"You can sit wherever you like. You're the president."

The last thing that came in that day was Jubal's workbench.

It took four of my movers to carry it off his flatbed and through the front door.

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