Regarding Anna (38 page)

We were soon ushered into the courtroom where we waited for the judge.

I was more nervous than I ought to have been. I felt guilty inheriting the house, until I reminded myself that Berghorn had put down a thousand dollars in earnest money in an effort to buy it after she died. I felt I would have done anything to see that
that
didn’t happen. I mused at what would happen to the thousand dollars—I doubted they would send it to him in prison.

The entire hearing lasted all of fifteen minutes. In the end, the judge admitted Minnie’s draft will as her final will, which meant I was the beneficiary of her house and its contents.

After Raymond and I left the courtroom, I asked him something I had been curious about for some time—why he had told me about Minnie wanting me to have the house before her will had even been validated.

“Because one way or another, I was going to make sure you got that house.”

“Why?”

“Grace, I watched that woman slowly transform from a young, vibrant wife and mother when she was married to Clarence to a miserable old coot after she lost her family. I tried to help her along the way, give her advice about how to get back on track. My wife did too. But she never took any of it. Then you came along, and I started to see the old Minnie reappear. You were going to inherit her house if it was the last thing I ever did for anyone.”

“Sounds like you knew her personally.”

“I didn’t see any reason to tell you this before, but she was my sister-in-law. Clarence was my brother.”

“I had no idea. I’m so sorry for your losses—a brother, a niece, and now Minnie. When did you learn of Minnie’s death?”

“When you called me.”

“I’m so sorry. Had I known about you, I would have—”

“You didn’t know.”

“But your last name is Webb.”

He smiled. “I changed it after I passed the bar.”

“Why?”

“Would you go to an attorney named Raymond Lawless?”

I had to laugh. “I guess not. Thanks for sharing that story about Minnie. It means a lot.”

I thanked him for all his work, and he told me what he had to do next to get the deed transferred to me. I asked him if there were any exceptions to what was legally mine with respect to the contents of the house.

“Can you give me an example?” he asked.

“Like what if I found something in the house that I suspected belonged to someone else but I didn’t know who?”

“Generally speaking, when you buy—or, in your case, inherit—a house, you inherit everything in it, even if it’s hidden. But that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t also have a claim to it, and then a court would have to decide who has the better claim.”

“I see.”

“Grace, I have to tell you about a rather odd stipulation in the will. I’m not sure if this is going to make any sense to you or not, but here goes.” He pulled out a copy of the will and read an excerpt. “If Miss Lindroth decides to plant any bushes on the property, they can only be winterberry bushes, nothing else.”

Now
that
made me laugh.

“You may have this copy,” he said.

We parted ways, but before I headed for home, I skimmed over the will. Minnie had had a substantial amount of Chicago & North Western Railroad stock, which she left to a foundation that took care of families of railroad employees who had lost their lives on duty.

She had been a kind soul.

* * *

The next morning, I waited for Tymon to come down for coffee so I could tell him the news.

“So what is making you smile so big this early in the morning, Gracie?” he asked.

“You’re standing in
my
kitchen, I’ll have you know.”

He reached out to shake my hand.

“Congratulations. You deserve this house.”

“Thank you. I feel at home here.”

“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do with it?”

“Do with it? I’m going to live here.”

“I mean the upstairs. It’s an odd layout even if you were to rent out the rooms.”

I gave that a moment’s thought. The income would be good, but living with boarders? I didn’t relish the thought, especially given the peculiar make-up of the last body of boarders residing there.

“I’m not sure if I would do that.”

“Maybe you’d want to convert it back to its original state then—a single-family home.”

“Maybe. I haven’t thought about it, to be truthful.”

Tymon paused before saying, “I suppose I should be going now that Berghorn is out of the picture.” His melancholy expression reminded me of a quote I’d heard:
Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.
I knew I would miss him.

“I’m sure you want to get back home and into your normal routine again.”

He didn’t respond, didn’t even seem to react.

“Can you stay a while...I mean, while I open that letter to Anna?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I left to retrieve the letter from my bedroom, and when I returned, Tymon was gone. I waited a few minutes, and when he didn’t return, I was at a loss as to what had just happened. This couldn’t be the way he was leaving—without saying goodbye.

I felt just awful. Should I go after him, or allow him to do this his own way? But I didn’t want our relationship to end like that. Then I realized that I didn’t want it to end at all.

I heard a familiar knock at the back door and heaved a sigh of relief.

“It’s open, Tymon.”

He came in—it was obvious he’d been crying.

“What’s wrong?”

He sat down at the kitchen table across from me.

“I’m sorry. You said ‘letter to Anna,’ and I lost it.”

He held up a white envelope.

“I wrote this to her in July of 1942.” He turned it around to let me see it was still sealed. “I never gave it to her.”

He pushed it across the table toward me.

“You want me to read it?”

“I want you to have it. You were the reason I wrote it.”

I stared into his eyes for an explanation but received none.

“I’m not following you.”

“I told you I loved her.”

I nodded.

“After you were born, I wanted more than anything to take care of the both of you. I fantasized about it every night when I went to bed, and I woke up every morning wondering if this would be the day I would get up enough nerve to give her the letter. Until it was too late.

“When it became clear to me that the police weren’t going to try to find you, I looked for you on my own. Every time I walked by a mother pushing a stroller, I’d peek inside, wondering if maybe it was you. Later, I walked by schools during recess wondering if one of the little girls was you, hoping that was the case because that meant you were okay. I even contacted the FBI at one point. They said they would open an investigation, but I don’t think they ever did. They said I wasn’t giving them very much to go on. I bugged them until they finally said they would keep the case open, but for now there wasn’t any more they could do.”

He sat slumped in the chair, looking defeated as if this had all just happened.

“You asked me one time why I hadn’t pursued a relationship with anyone after Anna was gone. Because I couldn’t. She was the only woman I could think about.”

He looked away from me for a moment, and when his eyes reunited with mine, I knew he was about to say something heartfelt.

“Gracie, the minute you walked into this house, I knew it was you. Minnie didn’t have to tell me later that Anna wasn’t your aunt. I could have told her that.”

Tears too powerful to blink away filled my eyes.

“You must have really loved her.”

“I adored her. I want you to read my letter to her...not now though. Read it when I’m not around.”

When he wasn’t around. After he left my kitchen...or this world?

He gulped and blew out a stream of air through open lips.

“I’m okay now. Let’s read the trunk letter.”

Now it was my turn to gulp. I opened the letter and read it aloud.

The letter deepened the emotional state I was already in.

“That pretty much confirms my suspicion that Anna’s uncle made a lot of money working in the Mexican oil industry, probably illegally or at least underhandedly. So he put his wife in a safe place and sent Anna to the U.S. Who knows what happened to him.”

“And he tried to salvage at least some of what he had acquired by sending it to Anna.”

“Looks like it. The letter is dated 1940, the year after Anna bought this house.”

“I wonder if she even opened the trunk. The contents looked untouched.”

“And the letter was still sealed.”

“I wonder why,” I asked him.

We sat in silence for a long moment shaking our heads.

“I’d say you’re a pretty rich girl.”

“If he got it illegally, I don’t think I want anything to do with it.”

“Gracie?”

“Yes.”

“You remind me so much of her.”

* * *

Before I went to bed that night, I put the still-sealed envelope from Tymon on the nightstand intending to read it in the morning when I was more rested.

Two hours passed while I lay in bed, eyes wide open. I turned on the lamp beside me and opened the envelope.

It wasn’t easy reading someone else's love letter. It was even harder knowing the writer could be my father.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Bad Timing

I sat in my living room fantasizing about what my life might have been like if Anna, my father, and I had still been a family. If this had been their home, I might have been there with my husband and infant daughter visiting. Or I might have just come home from college where I was working on my master’s degree. Or I might have been in town visiting for a few days, away from my home in New York or Los Angeles or…Timbuktu.

Each time I studied this room, I saw it in a different light, or maybe I was just in a different place in my life and saw most things differently.

The court date to determine if I could take possession of my parents’ safe deposit box was five weeks away. I barely had enough cash—cash that I could truly call my own—to get by on until then.

If the box didn’t reveal the truths I was after, I made a promise to myself to forget the identity crisis and move on—no matter what. That promise was one that was very hard to swallow.

Before picking up the photos of the paintings in Minnie’s attic, I ran by the Illinois District Court office to see if I could find out Berghorn’s hearing date. When they told me none had been set yet, I was disappointed but not surprised. These things took time. Unfortunately, until I knew this man’s fate, I couldn’t relax.