Judge Ambroses widow, ninety-two, said, Patricia, my husband handled Carls business in 1983. I have waited a long time, hoping this call would never have to come. Carl was a good man. Let me tell you the part he was too ashamed to say.
I told her about the man in Carls chair, the quitclaim deed, out by Christmas.
When Carl was very young, she said, before he ever met you, he was briefly married. It ended badly, and in 1983 my husband, the judge, finalized the divorce. The house was awarded to Carl, solely and completely, free of any claim by that first wife. Whatever quitclaim her son is holding, she had nothing to give him, because the court gave the house to Carl in 1983.
The court paper taped behind the clock face was the decree, signed by Judge Ambrose, awarding Carl the house free and clear.
The secret my husband begged me not to hate him for was only that he had been young once, and hurt once, long before he ever wound that clock for me.
The young man was not cruel, only misled by a mother who told him a house was his when it never was. When my lawyer showed him the 1983 decree, he read it twice, and then he apologized, and he meant it. He had lost his mother and gone looking for something of hers, and found only that she had been wrong.
I wind the mantel clock myself now, every Sunday night at nine, the way Carl did for forty-one years. It keeps good time again. And I do not hate him. I never could. He left me the house, and the clock, and the truth, all in the same place.