Dad read the top line of that document, and his voice failed him halfway through.
The coin, it said, was one of a handful in the world that could never be privately owned. Decades ago it had left the hands of the government under conditions, registered and documented, and the law was plain. It could not change hands again without the proper authority being told. My father sold it to a collector and told no one.
My parents had blown seventy-three thousand dollars on a cruise by selling my son coin collection, and buried inside it was a single coin that was never legally theirs, or the collector, or anyone private to hold, and now a federal agent was standing in the dining room over the bon-voyage shrimp.
The agent was calm about it. The coin had already been recovered from the buyer, who cooperated the moment he understood. What remained was the matter of who had sold a coin that could not be sold, and that matter fell squarely on my parents.
But here is the part that mattered to me. The rest of the collection.
Every other coin in those albums, the ones with the name of Ben written inside in my grandfather hand, had been Ben property. My grandfather built that collection for his grandson, coin by coin, and documented it as a gift. My parents had sold my son property without any right to do it.
Mr. Okafor helped us prove it, album by album. The collector returned the entire collection rather than fight a claim that clear, and glad, too, to be rid of coins tangled up with a federal case.
The albums came home to Ben. All of them, minus the one coin that was never anyone to keep.
And that one coin? The government placed it where it belonged, in a museum, under glass, where the public can see it. There is a small card beside it now that lists the collectors who helped return it, and the name of my grandfather is on that card, and so is Ben.
Grandpa probably wanted to help Aunt Dana, Ben had said.
Grandpa wanted his grandson to have every coin he ever placed in those albums, and to have his name in a museum besides. The cruise was cancelled. My parents have a great deal to answer for. And Ben has the life work of his grandfather back in his own hands.
He studies them most evenings, the way he did when Grandpa was alive. And the rarest one, the one under glass in the museum, he has been to see three times. He stands in front of it a long while. Then he says, quiet, that is Grandpa and me.