Three days after my husband’s funeral, my stepson laid a brand-new will on my kitchen table. Dated last June. Everything to him. The house. The orchard. The truck. Even the dog. “You’ve got thirty days to get out, Verla.” Frank’s signature sat at the bottom in blue ink. Neat. Steady. Too steady. Because Frank broke his right hand in May. He couldn’t hold a fork until August. I cut his meat for him every night. I didn’t argue. I poured Curtis a coffee. Then I took Frank’s old fountain pen from the drawer and set it beside the will without a word . Curtis smirked. But his lawyer picked up the pen, turned it over in his fingers, and went pale. “Mrs. Ashmore,” he said slowly, “where did you get.
this pen?”
“Frank’s had it for thirty years,” I said. “Why?”
The lawyer’s name was Mr. Hadley. He was a thin, careful man in a gray suit, and Curtis had hired him two days after the funeral. He set the pen down very gently, the way you’d set down something that might go off.
“Because I gave him this pen,” he said. “In 1994. When he made his first will with my father’s firm. And I saw him use it again last September, in my office, when he signed his current will.”
Curtis stopped smirking.
“What current will?” he said.
Mr. Hadley didn’t answer him. He looked at me. “Mrs. Ashmore, Frank came to see me on September 14th. His hand was still in a brace. He signed with his left hand, very shakily, with this pen, in front of two witnesses and a notary. He made me promise to keep the original in our vault and to contact you if anyone ever produced a different document.”
He turned to Curtis. “I didn’t know you were his son when you hired me. You told me your name was Curtis Ward.”
“That’s my mother’s name,” Curtis said. His voice had gone thin.
“And you told me this will came from your father’s desk.” Mr. Hadley tapped the paper. “Dated June 3rd. Signed in a smooth right hand. When Frank’s right hand was in a cast.”
The kitchen was so quiet I could hear the old clock over the stove.
Curtis stood up so fast his chair fell over. “This is ridiculous. He signed it. I watched him.”
“Then you watched a man sign with a hand that was broken in two places,” I said. “I have the hospital bills, Curtis. I drove him to every appointment. You didn’t visit once.”
That was true. Frank married me eighteen years ago, when Curtis was already grown and gone. Frank tried with that boy. He paid off his car twice. He co-signed a loan that Curtis never repaid. He called every Christmas and every birthday and mostly got voicemail. When Frank got sick in the fall, Curtis came by exactly once, to ask whether the orchard had been appraised.
Mr. Hadley picked up his briefcase. “I’m withdrawing as your counsel, Mr. Ashmore. And I’d strongly advise you to find a criminal attorney. Presenting a forged will in probate is a felony in this state.”
Curtis left without a word. He didn’t take his coffee.
The real will was read a week later in Mr. Hadley’s office. I sat in a leather chair with Frank’s dog, Biscuit, asleep on my feet. I’d been told I could bring her. Frank would have wanted her there.
The house and the truck were mine. The orchard was left in trust for me during my lifetime, and then it would go to the county 4-H program, where Frank had taught kids to graft apple trees every summer for twenty years.
And there was a paragraph about Curtis.
Mr. Hadley read it in a careful voice. “To my son Curtis, I leave fifty thousand dollars, to be paid in five yearly installments, on the condition that he completes a full season of work in the orchard alongside my wife Verla. If he refuses, or if he contests this will in any way, this gift is void.”
I almost laughed. Frank knew his son. He wanted Curtis to earn it. He wanted him to spend time with me. He wanted, I think, for the two of us to finally become a family.
