They Threw Us in the Snow. I Owned Everything. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What Ruth Left

The estate lawyer lays out Pinegate, the Thayer loan and the mortgage on the Ferris Road house, and finds her a family lawyer. The camera footage shows Colin looking at Joy's inhaler and going back inside.

My grandmother's lawyer had an office over a hardware store on the Litchfield green.

Tobias drove us there at eight-thirty on December 26th and parked across the street.

"I'll take Joy to the bakery," he said. "Ask him everything."

"I'm going to pay you rent for the gatehouse," I said. "Starting today."

He looked at me.

"Landlord and tenant," I said. "That's all this is, and I want it said out loud."

"I don't take rent from you," Tobias said. "But fine. Say it as often as you need."

Joy waved at me from the window of his truck as they pulled away.

The lawyer was a thin man in his seventies with a cardigan and a cold coffee.

He stood up when I came in and shook my hand with both of his.

"Ms. Talcott, I'm sorry about the timing," he said. "Your grandmother told me not to wait for a convenient day."

I put my phone on his desk.

"Tell me what I own," I said. "Slowly, and in plain words."

He nodded and sat down.

"Your grandmother started with a small settlement after your grandfather died," he said. "A friend told her which companies to buy. She never sold, and she never spent."

"She drove a nine-year-old Buick."

"She did, yes. She said a Buick that works is a Buick that works."

He slid a folder across the desk.

"All of it is held through one company, Pinegate Fund, LLC," he said. "She put your name on it as sole owner. The transfer finished on Christmas Eve at ten past five."

I touched the folder and didn't open it.

"The Thayers are asking for two hundred million dollars from Pinegate," I said.

"Thayer Holdings asked in January," he said. "We said yes in June, with terms. The wire is set for the thirtieth, at ten o'clock, at a closing in their boardroom. I was going to attend as your grandmother's representative."

"Did Margaret ever meet her?"

"Never. She sent your grandmother thirty-one letters this year and never got an answer. She still doesn't know who she's writing to."

I let that sit for a moment.

Thirty-one letters.

Margaret had never once written to ask how my grandmother's funeral went.

"Pinegate also holds a first mortgage on the Ferris Road house," the lawyer said. "Mrs. Thayer borrowed against it last spring. That was a smaller loan, before this one."

"She mortgaged the house she locked us out of."

"She did. And it's yours to call, in whole or in part, if the terms are broken."

I opened the folder then.

There was a page of numbers. I looked at the last line and shut it again.

"I have two hundred and twelve dollars in my wallet," I said. "Colin froze our accounts yesterday."

"Pinegate has an operating account, and it's yours." He pushed over a card and a slip with a number on it. "Ten thousand to start, and more when you ask."

I held the card with both hands.

"Is there anything else?" I asked.

"There's a letter from your grandmother. She wanted you to have it on January 6th, and not a day before. I don't know what's in it."

"Why January?"

"She only said you'd understand once you'd been wronged by people who'd made you promises." He folded his hands. "I believe she meant the Thayers."

I almost said I had already been wronged.

Instead I said, "Who do I need for a custody hearing tomorrow?"

He picked up the phone.

By nine-thirty a family lawyer had come up the stairs, a brisk woman in a gray suit who shook my hand and asked what she needed to know.

I told her all of it in order, ham to inhaler.

She wrote nothing down until I said the word camera.

"There's a camera?" she asked.

"On the gatehouse. It points at the front door."

"Whose gatehouse?"

"Tobias Thayer's. My husband's brother."

She looked at the lawyer and then back at me.

"Does he have the footage?"

"He says every minute since he put it up."

"Get it," she said. "Get it today."

Tobias was in the bakery across the green with Joy on his lap and a cinnamon roll between them.

She looked up with sugar on her chin.

"Mom, Uncle Tobias says people who lock doors on kids are called something I can't say."

"He's right," I said.

I looked at him.

"I need the drive," I said. "From the camera. All of last night."

"It's in the safe at home," he said. "I'll give you a copy now."

He did it in the back of the truck on a laptop, with Joy asleep against his arm.

The camera had a long lens that could read a license plate from the top of the drive.

I sat beside him and watched the grainy green picture come up.

The front door of the Thayer house, from above and a little to the left.

Nine-fourteen.

The door opens. Colin pushes me out. The lock turns.

I knock. My coat is over my arm. Joy stands behind me in the snow.

On the screen I didn't look like a woman about to win anything.

Then the picture showed what I hadn't seen from the porch.

Behind the glass panel, Colin turned toward the hall table.

The inhaler lay beside the mittens, where Joy had left it.

He looked at it.

He looked at it for a long time, with his hand half raised.

Then he went back to the dining room.

Tobias stopped the clip and said nothing.

His jaw was hard.

"That's the one," I said, and my voice did not sound like mine. "That's the one the judge sees tomorrow."

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