PART 3 — THE LOCKBOX
When Dana and Brents lawyer stood at the Knox County register of deeds and the clerk turned the monitor around, the name of the owner of record was not Walt, and it was not his children. It was mine. Sheila Haskins. And underneath it was a date, filed fifteen years ago, and a note that said, transfer on death, sole beneficiary, the wife.
Walt had changed everything after we married. He put the house in a transfer-on-death deed, in my name, and recorded it at the county, and he never told his children, because he knew exactly how they would behave the moment he was gone.
The will Dana waved in my face was nineteen years old and worthless, and the little brick house on the hill had belonged to me, in the countys own records, since the year we wed.
The envelope in the lockbox at the fishing cabin was a letter from Walt, telling me where to find the lawyer, Mr. Pruitt, and telling me not to look until his children tried to take what was mine. They tried on a Saturday morning, over a casserole, three days after I buried him.
Mr. Pruitt handled the rest. The recorded deed stood. There was nothing for Dana and Brents lawyer to file, because there was nothing of theirs to transfer.
I did not throw them out the way they tried to throw me out. Walt would not have wanted that. I let them take the things their father had actually set aside for them, and I kept the house, and the truck, and the recliner they so generously offered me.
You can keep the recliner, Brent had laughed. I did. I keep it by the window, where Walt used to sit, in the house that was mine all along.
Dana called once, to ask how I could do this to Walts children. I did not do anything, I said. Your father did, fifteen years ago, because he knew his children better than they knew themselves.
The pencil marks are still on the doorframe. The yellow curtains I sewed still hang in the kitchen. And I live out my days in the home Walt made certain no one could ever take from me.
Thirty days, Dana had said. It turned out she was the one on borrowed time in that house, not me.