Honey, Dales mother said, what was in the safe. I opened my purse.
The whole backyard had gone quiet. Dales mother was holding the photo of the inside of unit 114, the storage unit in my name that I never rented, full of boxes labeled in her late husbands handwriting. His medals. His tools. His records. His coins. Everything Dale had told her was donated to Goodwill after the funeral, two years ago.
My husband had not donated his dead fathers belongings, he had hidden them in a storage unit he opened in my name with a forged signature, so that he could quietly sell off a mans whole life, piece by piece, while telling his grieving mother there was nothing worth keeping.
You told me you gave it all away, she said to Dale. You told me there was nothing worth keeping. But that was not the worst of it, and I had the worst of it in my purse.
In the back corner of unit 114 there had been a small fireproof safe, and because the unit was in my name, the manager had let me open it. I took out what was inside and set it on the picnic table in front of Dales mother.
It was her husbands will. The real one. And a stack of savings bonds, and a letter, all addressed to her.
Dale had not just hidden his fathers tools and medals to sell them. He had hidden his fathers will, the one that left everything to his widow, because the version that got filed after the funeral, the one Dale produced, left a great deal more to Dale. The real will, in the safe, told a different story, in his fathers own signature, witnessed and dated.
His father had left his savings to his wife. Dale had hidden that will in a safe, in a unit, in my name, and let his mother believe her husband had left her far less than he did, so that Dale could keep the difference.
His mother read her husbands letter at the picnic table, with birthday cake going warm on the plates, and she cried, because it turned out the man she buried had thought of her carefully, right to the end, and her own son had hidden that care in a storage unit to profit from her grief.
The real will went to a lawyer. A forged storage rental and a concealed will are not small things, and they are not civil misunderstandings either. Dale is answering for both now, to his mother and to a court.
His mother got her husbands medals back. His tools. His records. The coin collection. And the savings her husband left her, once the real will replaced the one Dale filed.
She keeps her husbands VFW cap on the hook by her door now, the one Dale swore was given away. She touches it on her way out, every time.
Dale and I are finished. A man who forges your name to hide his own fathers will from his own mother will do anything to anyone, and the only question left is whether you find out in time.
I found out because of a small silver key under a floor mat, and a storage company that called the name on the contract, which happened to be mine. Mind your business, Dale told me, when I asked about the key. It turned out to be my business after all. It had my name on it the whole time.