The lawyer turned the page, and the second part of the will began to unfold in the quiet of the old dining room on Jones Street in Savannah. I am Gloria Banks, seventy six years old, and I had cleaned this house for Charles Whitaker for twenty seven years. I sat at the foot of the long mahogany table in my church dress, with my purse in my lap, while the widow at the other end rustled her silk. Her daughter Ashley sat beside her, in tears, her hand resting on her belly. The lawyer cleared his throat and read on.
“To Gloria Banks,” he read, “who sat with my wife when she was ill and with me when I was ill, and who never once asked for anything in return, I leave the sum of one million, five hundred thousand dollars.” The room made a sound like a breath drawn in. I did not move. Mrs. Whitaker, in her pearls, did not breathe at all. Then the lawyer turned the sheet over and read the next line, the line about the baby of Ashley, and my son Marcus, and the trust that Charles had set up in the autumn.
The baby, I had learned only three months earlier, was my own grandchild. Marcus and Ashley had met at the hospital where he worked nights, and they had kept it secret from both families, because they were afraid of what her mother would say. Charles had found out first. He had said nothing to me, but he had written the trust. It named Gloria Banks as co trustee, with Ashley, of all that he left to the child, so that the little one would be raised by a grandmother who loved him, whatever the family might think.
A second will read aloud in a mahogany dining room gave one housekeeper the morning to bring two families together in Savannah.
I gave my terms quietly, when the lawyer had finished and the room was silent. “Mrs. Whitaker, I did not ask for this house or this money. But I will take what Mr. Charles left, and I will honor it. I ask only that the child be welcome in this family, as he is in mine. Ashley, you will have a place in my home, whenever you want it. I will not ask the Whitakers to love my son. I will ask only that they be kind to his child, and the rest will come in its own time.”
Ashley rose from her chair, trembling, and came the whole length of the table to my side. “Gloria,” she said, “I am so sorry. I let Mother talk me into hiding it. I let her call Marcus a mistake. I hated myself every day. He is the best man I have ever known, and I was too afraid to say so.” She dropped to her knees beside my chair, and I held her face in my hands. “Child,” I said, “I have known about Marcus loving you since Easter. I just did not have the nerve to say it either.”
It was then that Mrs. Whitaker, crimson, snatched the letter from the hand of the lawyer, where Charles had enclosed his private note, and swept toward the pocket doors with it clutched to her pearls. She would have burned it in the kitchen grate. But the housekeeper, Mrs. Pearl, a small woman who had worked in that house even longer than I, stepped out of the pantry with a silver tray and stood squarely in the doorway. “Madam,” she said, “Mr. Charles asked me to see that Gloria received that letter. I never failed him yet.” She held out the tray.
Mrs. Whitaker stood frozen, the letter shaking in her hand. Slowly, the fight ran out of her shoulders. She laid the letter on the tray as if she were laying down a weapon. Then she turned, in the doorway of her own dining room, and I saw that she was crying behind the pearls. “He would not have done this,” she whispered, “if he had known how ashamed I am.” I stood and walked down the table and took her hand. “He knew,” I said. “That is why he left it to me to forgive you.”
The money consequences were handled with care. The one million, five hundred thousand dollars came to me within the month, and I put most of it into a college fund for my grandson. The trust, which was larger than anyone had guessed, was administered by Ashley and me, with the lawyer as witness, and its first act was to pay for the medical care of the baby and the education of the child of every employee of the Whitaker house. Mrs. Whitaker, to my astonishment, signed the first check.
In the name of Charles Whitaker, who passed in the winter, I started the Charles Whitaker Fund. It pays for scholarships for night shift nurses and for heart rehabilitation for patients without insurance, in Chatham, Effingham and Bryan counties. In the first year we sent twenty three nurses back to school and covered rehabilitation for sixty one patients. One was a retired shipyard welder from Pooler who had been turned away from three clinics. He now walks two miles every morning on the new treadmill in his own garage.
Last Sunday, the whole family gathered at my little house on the east side, around my own table, which is much smaller than the one on Jones Street. Marcus carried the baby. Ashley set the greens on the sideboard. And in the doorway, awkwardly, with a pound cake in both hands, stood Mrs. Whitaker. I took the cake from her, kissed her cheek, and led her to the chair by the window, where the sun was best. The baby reached for her pearls and laughed, and she did not pull away. Outside, the oak branches moved in the warm Savannah wind, and for the first time in twenty seven years I was not thinking about the next room to be cleaned.