The next morning I got up early, took the letter from the tackle box under the seat of Ernies old fishing boat, tucked it in my purse, and drove into Anderson to a lawyer, and by afternoon my nephew Blakes threat had fallen apart like wet paper.
Blake had sat at my kitchen table in his sunglasses and told me his grandfather always said the cabin should stay in the family, that he was family, that Id sign a life estate to him or hed find a doctor to declare me incompetent and take it anyway. Either way, he said. On Ernies dock.
What Blake did not know was that his own grandfather, my brother-in-law, had written Ernie a letter in 1998, and Ernie kept it in the tackle box all these years.
Blakes own grandfather, the man he kept quoting, had put it in writing in 1998 that the cabin was wholly Ernies and mine, bought and paid for by us, and that no one in the family had any claim on it, the exact opposite of what Blake was standing on my dock swearing his grandfather wanted.
Blakes grandfather helped Ernie build the dock, yes, as a brother helps a brother, for the joy of it, and he wrote it down plainly so there would never be a fight. The letter said, this cabin is yours and Ruths, free and clear, I helped for love and I claim nothing, and if anyone in this family ever tells you different, this letter is your answer.
The lawyer had me do two things. First, we recorded that letter alongside the deed, so Blakes claim was dead on arrival. Second, because Blake had threatened to have me declared incompetent, the lawyer helped me get a clean bill of mental health from my own doctor and set up my affairs airtight, so no bought doctor could ever say otherwise.
And then I made a new will. The cabin does not go to Blake. It goes to the childrens hospital where Ernie was cared for, to be sold and used for families who cannot afford care, because a nephew who threatens his widowed aunt over a fishing cabin has told you exactly who he is.
When Blake came back, I handed him a copy of his grandfathers letter and I said, honey, your grandpa already answered you, in 1998. This cabin was never the familys. It was Ernies and mine. And now it belongs to sick children. Take your sunglasses off in my house.
He left without a word. I still sit in Ernies boat on summer evenings, tied to the dock two brothers built for love. Either way Ill get the cabin, Blake had said. He got nothing, because a good man wrote the truth down twenty-seven years ago and a good woman kept it in a tackle box.