Chapter 3 - A Call from the Courthouse
Seven days after Carlton dismissed me, the telephone rang while I was counting the coins in my grocery jar.
I had begun separating quarters from dimes because groceries had become a matter of choosing what could wait.
The caller asked, in a careful voice, whether she was speaking to Elnora Ruthanne Whitsett.
Hearing all three names together made me sit down.
"Yes, this is she."
"My name is Rosella Pritchard," the woman said.
"I'm calling from the county register of deeds."
I knew the courthouse by its stone steps and its old clock, but I had never received a personal call from anyone inside it.
"Is something wrong?" I asked.
"I believe there's something you need to see."
"Have I done something?"
"No, Mrs. Whitsett."
She hesitated.
"Would you be able to come in with identification?"
I asked if she could explain over the telephone.
She answered that the record was public but that she had promised Henrietta Lockridge she would speak with me personally.
My hand tightened around the receiver.
"Mrs. Lockridge asked you?"
"She did."
After the call ended, I stared at the grocery jar until the kitchen went dark around me.
I imagined unpaid taxes, old debts, and papers that required a signature I did not understand.
Carlton's check still lay beneath Mama's photograph.
I had not deposited it.
A part of me feared that accepting those three hundred dollars might have meant signing away something I did not know I possessed.
That night I called Alfreda.
She was preparing supper when she answered, and I could hear pans rattling in the background.
I told her about the courthouse and Rosella's mention of Henrietta.
"Mama, please don't start a fight with those Lockridge sons," she said.
"You know how much influence they have."
I told her I wasn't trying to fight anyone.
"Then why do they want you down there?"
"I don't know."
She sighed.
"You have to think about yourself for once."
That was exactly what I thought I was doing when I stayed home the following morning.
I washed the curtains, sorted my medications, and watched the mail truck pass.
Every ordinary sound offered an excuse not to leave.
I told myself the call could be returned another day.
I told myself Rosella would telephone again if it mattered.
But I kept hearing Henrietta's voice asking me to spell Ruthanne.
It was a peculiar thing to be frightened of one's own middle name.
Thursday dawned clear and cold enough to hint that October was coming.
For twenty-six years I had gone to the farmhouse on Thursday to wash floors.
My body woke at the usual hour without an alarm.
I lay in bed listening to the quiet and suddenly felt angry.
Carlton had taken my work, but he had not purchased the right to make me afraid of a courthouse.
I rose, pressed my navy Sunday dress, pinned my silver hair back, and put on the brown shoes I had worn to the funeral.
Before leaving I placed Henrietta's last Christmas card in my handbag.
She had written, in a hand already beginning to tremble, that the new year might still bring good surprises.
At the time I assumed it was the sort of thing people wrote in Christmas cards.
Now I wanted the comfort of her handwriting beside me.
The drive to town took thirty-four minutes.
I counted each mile as if it were a decision I could still reverse.
At the courthouse I parked three spaces from the entrance, checked that my identification was in my purse, and climbed the steps slowly.
The building smelled of floor wax, old paper, and coffee.
I found the register's office past a display of historical photographs.
A woman near my age looked up from behind the counter.
Her gray hair was carefully pinned, and her glasses hung from a beaded chain.
"Mrs. Whitsett?"
I nodded.
She came around the counter instead of making me wait on the other side.
"I'm Rosella."
Her handshake was warm and steady.
"Henrietta and I played bridge together every Tuesday for forty years," she said.
I thought of the bridge nights when Mrs. Lockridge insisted on fresh flowers in the parlor.
"She cheated at cards?" I asked before I could stop myself.
Rosella laughed.
"Only when she thought we weren't paying attention."
For the first time in a week, I smiled.
Then Rosella's expression grew serious.
"She told me you might be afraid to come."
I swallowed.
"She knew me well."
"She did."
Rosella led me to a long wooden table behind the public counter.
An enormous volume lay there, its dark cover worn smooth at the corners.
The gold lettering on its spine read DEED BOOK.
I had seen books like that in old movies but never imagined one would have anything to say about me.
Rosella opened to a marked page, smoothing the edge without touching the writing.
She turned the book so it faced me.
Rows of names and dates filled the page in formal type.
I saw Lockridge, Henrietta M., near the top of a recorded instrument.
My pulse quickened.
Then my eyes reached a line farther down.
Whitsett, Elnora Ruthanne.
Not a nickname and not an abbreviation.
Every letter was right.
Rosella watched my face and waited while I searched for an explanation.
"I don't understand," I whispered.
She placed her finger beneath a paragraph and told me to read slowly.
I read the words once, then again, but their meaning seemed too large for the room.
There was a description of the farmhouse, the cottage, the barn, and the fields running toward the highway.
Under my full name stood the phrase that changed the direction of my life.
The property had been conveyed to me, with Henrietta retaining the right to live there until her death.
I lifted my eyes to Rosella.
"Is this some kind of mistake?"
She shook her head gently.
"No, Elnora."
For a moment I could hear nothing but the clock above the courthouse hallway.
May you like
Then Rosella said the words I had not dared imagine.
"Henrietta made you the owner of her home."
