I closed my eyes under that beach umbrella, because I knew exactly who had Earls phone. I gave it to his daughter Rhonda at the funeral myself, so she could save the pictures off it. I never canceled the line. I could not stand the thought of his voicemail going away.
Rhonda used Earls phone number and his email to create an account named Earl H and add it to my smart lock as an authorized user. Then she handed the access to her brother Travis, so he and Kayla could walk up, touch the lock, and move a crib into my house like they owned it.
The Lauderdale County deputies went gentle, the way I asked, because Kayla was eight months along and that baby never did a thing wrong. They checked the deed. Two hundred and one thousand dollars, paid in July from the sale of the farm, my name and mine alone. No spouse, no stepchild, no account named after a dead man had any standing against it.
At the funeral Travis called me the second wife like it was a diagnosis. The deed did not care what number wife I was. It only had the one name on it.
Creating an account in a dead mans name to defeat a lock is not a family disagreement, and the deputies said so. The authorized user came off. The locks were rekeyed that week by a company the sheriff recommended.
I did not fight them over the baby. I am not built that way. I told Travis and Kayla they had three days to find somewhere real to go, and that the crib and the little sign could go with them, and that naming the child after Earl did not give them Earls house.
I kept Earls phone line one more month, just to hear him say you have reached Earl, leave it at the beep, one last time. Then I let it go. Rhonda had already taken the pictures. That was all I ever meant for her to have.
I am back in my little brick ranch in Florence. The Welcome Home Baby Earl sign is gone off my door. My own name is on the deed, and on the new lock, and that is the end of it.