I put on my glasses and read the line slowly, with my finger under every word. “Gwendolyn Rose Akers, grantee: the cottage by the pond and ten acres of the land on which it stands, with the tire swing and the live oak.” My throat tightened. Then, three lines farther down, I read it again. “Gwendolyn Rose Akers, personal representative: to carry out this last will and testament, with full power and authority.” My name was written twice. Mrs. Bellamy pressed a tissue into my hand. “He chose you to carry out his will, Gwendolyn,” she said gently. “Not his sons. You.”
She sat down across from me, folded her hands and smiled. “Lucius came to my office himself last November, in a wheelchair, with a nurse who was not you,” she said. “He said, Marjorie, I have two sons who would sell this house before the funeral flowers wilt. I am going to leave the keys to a woman who has sat up with me through eighteen years of nights, and who has never once asked for a thing. He made me witness every page, and he had me file the will the same day. He also asked me to make sure you would have your license in your purse.” I laughed through my tears. That was the Judge.
On Monday, the lawyer read the will in the study of the Judge, under his portrait. Grant sat in the leather chair with his ankle across his knee, and Mitchell stood by the window. When the lawyer reached my name, Grant uncrossed his legs. “She cannot be the personal representative,” he said. “She is the help.” The lawyer set down his glasses. “Mr. Thornbury, the court has already accepted the will. Mrs. Akers is the personal representative, and she holds the authority to manage, sell or hold every asset of the estate. Your father drafted this document himself, and he was entirely clear of mind.” Grant went pale. Mitchell sat down slowly.
A name written twice in the official records gave one son the weekend to bring Gwendolyn back to the house on Miccosukee Road.
I did not raise my voice. The Judge would not have wished it. I stood at the study door with the box of my slippers and my Bible in my arms, and I said, “Grant, I am not going to put anybody out of anything. You may stay in the house until the end of the month. All I ask is three things. You will say thank you, once, with your whole face. You will give me back my reading glasses, which you carried to the car like they were trash. And you will never again hand a woman four hundred dollars and tell her she can go too.” Grant stared at me. Then he took out his wallet and laid the four bills on the desk.
The surprise came on Saturday morning, when I drove out to the cottage by the pond. A row of cars stood along the fence, and on the lawn stood nearly sixty people. The mailman, the church ladies, the neighbors from Miccosukee Road, and a dozen lawyers in good suits who had practiced in front of the Judge. Mrs. Bellamy had told them all. An elderly attorney named Mr. Whitcomb lifted his hat. “Gwendolyn,” he said, “Lucius told us at the bar association dinner that the finest person he knew was the lady who sat up with him in the dark.” The women had brought grits, eggs and biscuits, and we ate on the grass.
The money consequences came swiftly. Grant had arranged to sell the house of the Judge to a developer, and the developer discovered that the personal representative controlled the sale and had no intention of signing. Grant had borrowed against the expected proceeds to cover an investment that had gone sour, and the bank called the loan. Mitchell, who had a more cautious nature, quietly withdrew from the lawsuit that Grant wanted to file. By the end of the month, Grant was sitting alone at the kitchen table in Miami, staring at a calculator. For the first time in his life, he had to wait.
I did what the Judge asked, and not a thing more. I sold nothing in a hurry. I kept the house, the lawn and the oaks, and I divided the estate exactly as the will directed: a fair share to Mitchell, a fair share to Grant, a gift to the church and one to the Leon County law library. When Grant came to sign the papers, he stood at the kitchen door with his head down. “Gwendolyn,” he said, in a voice I hardly knew, “I am sorry. I did not know what you did for him.” I told him that the Judge knew, and that was enough.
My son Malcolm drove down from Atlanta with his wife and my granddaughters. He stood on the porch of the cottage and said, “Mama, I told you to let it go. I was afraid, and I was wrong.” I took him in my arms. “Fear is a poor judge,” I said. “Now I have a pond, and a tire swing.” The girls ran across the grass and climbed the old oak, and one of them swung out over the water and shrieked. I stood at the edge of the pond where I had learned to swim, laughing, with my hand pressed to my heart.
With part of the gift of the Judge to me, I started a program in his name. The Thornbury Night Fund pays for trained overnight caregivers for seniors in Leon County who have no family to sit with them. On the first night, we sent twelve caregivers into twelve homes. The next morning, a gentleman of ninety one told me, over a plate of grits, “Mrs. Akers, I have not slept through the night since my wife passed.” I thought of the Judge in his hospital bed, with the lamp on, and I had to look away.
On the first Saturday in March, I made breakfast in the kitchen of the old house for the whole family. Grits, eggs, and a biscuit, buttered by hand. Grant sat at the head of the table, quiet and shaken, and Mitchell sat across from him. Malcolm poured coffee. I set a plate in front of the empty chair at the end of the table, and then I stood back. Grant looked at it for a long time. “Nobody should drive home on an empty stomach,” he said softly. I smiled. “That,” I said, “is an order from the bench.” And all of us bowed our heads.