“…Mother Pat, what in the world are you doing here at this hour?” Todd said, and the box of files in his arms seemed to grow heavier as he spoke. I stood in the showroom of Dunn Motors on Glenstone Avenue, in my black memorial dress, with Roy key ring in my hand, and I saw my stepson look from my face to the key and back. He had never called me Mother in twenty two years. He did not call me that now out of affection. He called me that the way a man calls a dog he hopes will go away.
I said I had come for Roy folder. Todd laughed, a short, hard sound, and said there was no folder, only old files, and that he was taking them to be shredded. I said that he could take them to be shredded after I looked inside. He stepped in front of the office door. He was forty four, a big man in a gray suit with a college ring, and I was seventy four, five feet two, with arthritis in both knees. And behind me, in the empty showroom, I heard the front door open.
It was Pastor Mike, the church secretary Mrs. Hollis, and a young man in a sheriff deputy uniform whom I had never seen before. Mrs. Hollis had telephoned them from the church parking lot, the minute I left. She had said, “Pat is going into that building alone, and I do not like it.” The deputy, a polite Black man in his thirties named Officer Reed, said that he was there as a courtesy, that nothing illegal had happened yet, and that he would be glad to stand in the doorway while I collected my late husband papers. I thanked him, and I meant it, because I had not realized how frightened I was until someone strong and kind stood beside me in that empty room.
A key on a ring carried since August, a second will typed in a church office, and a deputy standing quietly in a doorway.
Todd put the box down on a leather sofa. It was a surrender, though he would never have called it one. I walked into Roy office. It smelled of cigar smoke and old coffee. The big oak desk was exactly as he had left it, the green blotter, the photograph of me at the lake, the little brass nameplate. I opened the bottom drawer with the key from his ring. Under the hanging folders was a thick manila envelope marked Floor Plan, in red marker, and under that a small leather diary with Roy handwriting on every page.
I did not read the diary then. I handed the envelope to Pastor Mike, who passed it to Officer Reed, who looked at it for a long time and then asked if there was a lawyer who could examine it properly. I said there was. Mrs. Hollis had already telephoned him, a quiet attorney named Mr. Granger from the church, who had never worked for the dealerships, and who arrived within twenty minutes in a tweed jacket, carrying a thermos and a legal pad.
Mr. Granger spent an hour in the office. At the end, he came out and sat next to me on the leather sofa. He explained that the folder documented loans taken on cars that did not exist, over four years, totaling almost one million dollars. The second will, the one Mrs. Hollis had typed on August second, left the third dealership and a controlling interest in the other two to me, with a condition: Craig and Todd would keep their jobs and a fair salary, but only if they repaid every dollar and cooperated fully with an audit.
Craig arrived at six, from his store across town, in a rage. He stormed into the showroom with his phone in his hand and began shouting, then saw the deputy, then saw his brother seated stiffly on the sofa, then saw me. The shouting stopped. He sat down on the opposite chair and stared at Roy folder. I told them both what was in the will. I told them I did not want to take their livelihoods. I wanted to see the stores honest again, and Roy name clean. For the first time in my life I saw that sorrow, in men, often wears the clothing of anger, and I felt sorry for them both.
They sat there for a long time. Todd was the one who broke. He put his big hands over his face and said that it had started with one car, one bad month, and a plan to move numbers around until the next quarter. It had become a habit. It had become a way of living. Craig said nothing. But after a while, he stood up and went to the wall, where Roy photograph hung beside the cash register, and he took it down and held it against his chest. He was crying openly, a fifty year old man in a sport coat.
The audit took eight months. Craig and Todd repaid the loans over time, with money from the sale of a boat, a cabin, two trucks, and a share of their own inheritance. They both pleaded to lesser charges and received probation. Mr. Granger arranged for a manager named Glenn, an honest man who had worked in the service department since 1991, to run the stores until the brothers earned their way back. I kept the third dealership in my own name, and I sat in Roy chair on Mondays, learning the business.
On the first anniversary of the memorial lunch, I stood in the church basement again, with the same coffee urn and the same long tables. Todd walked in, in a plain suit, holding a plate of ham sandwiches. He set it down in front of me, awkwardly, and said, “Pat, I wanted to say that Dad chose well.” I looked up at him. It was the first time in twenty two years that he had called me by name. I took a sandwich, and I patted the empty chair beside me, and he sat down.