Part 3 — The Forfeited Share
The second slip was tucked under the first, curled tight like a fortune, and I read it aloud at Martas Easter table in the voice I use for charts at the nurses station.
“It was worth two hundred fourteen thousand dollars. That is what Wilbur just gave up.”
The ham sat untouched. A lily petal dropped from the sideboard onto the tablecloth.
“Gwennie, do not be angry. I wrote the clause so your brother would think before he grabbed, not to punish him. If he sues, his share does not go to you and Marta. It goes into a trust for his two children, Tom and Ellie, for their schooling.”
Wilbur put the copy of a copy down on the table. His hands were shaking.
“Mom did that?”
Marta passed him a napkin, and he held it against his eyes.
Our mother had known he would grab, and she had built a gate that would catch him gently instead of letting him fall.
Mr. Teague the trustee came to the house on Monday with the signed original and the notary stamp. He was a quiet man with half-glasses, and he went over every page with the three of us at Moms kitchen table.
The trust was valid. The paper Wilbur had waved was not what it claimed to be, and Mr. Teague explained that the copy bore no notary mark and no witness, so it carried no weight at all.
The probate petition that Wilbur had filed would be dismissed, and the no-contest clause would take effect as written. His share would go into the childrens trust, with Marta named to oversee it.
Wilbur brought Moms rings back that evening, still warm from his pinky. He set them in my palm, and then he asked whether he could help clean up the broken glass in the yard.
We spent the whole afternoon in the thawing snow, the three of us, sorting what could be saved. Most of it was beyond saving. But Mr. Teague had told us that Mom kept a photo album of all two hundred snowglobes in her safe deposit box, one picture each, with the date and the town written underneath.
That night we sat at the table and turned the pages. Duluth. The Dells. Branson, where she had gotten so sunburned that Dad nicknamed her the lobster.
Wilbur held the last page a long time and then slid it toward me.
I took the little lighthouse from the windowsill, shook it once, and watched the white flakes swirl.
“Hold still,” I said to my brother, and for the first time since January, he did, and everything settled.