10
Travis
The ride over to Rogers’ office, short as it was (what in this town isn’t a short ride away?), was quiet and uneventful. Abby sat in the seat next to me, not uttering a word, as she listened to her music. I glanced over at her a few times, to see if she was even looking at the window to see what the town was like, but she showed little interest in what was going by. I tried to think of topics in my head that would be good for conversation, but I could never seem to come up with anything lately to connect with her. So we rode on for the few minutes, with the only sound the light hum of whatever song she happened to be listening to at the moment going through the air.
We arrived at Rogers’ office a little after nine. I had figured since he said the office opened at nine that he would actually be there to meet us, but, as things were going for me lately, that wasn’t going to happen. We were greeted by his admin, a woman by the name of Carol, who said Mr. Rogers was expected shortly. Carol was a friendly woman who looked to be in her early sixties, and she sat back down behind her desk while Abby and I waited in the less-than-comfortable vinyl-backed chairs that were in the outer office. Abby continued to fiddle with her iPod while I just looked around, hoping that we could get this over with quickly. I didn’t expect that Dad had much that I would have to deal with beyond the house and whatever was in it. I did wonder about the condition of the house and whether it would be a good place for Abby and me to live. It would be nice for her to be closer to my Mom since she was the only family we had at this point. Canon, though a small town, wasn’t an awful place to live. My only fear was what I was going to do with the rest of my life. The fire department wanted me to take my disability and retire. After twelve years, my pension was going to be enough to live on, but I was still too young to just sit around and, well, risk the threat of becoming like my father. I wanted something to do, but I didn’t know what else I would be good at doing. I never finished beyond the one year of college, and I couldn’t see myself sitting in a classroom with a bunch of teenagers listening to lectures about God knows what today. There were a lot of decisions on the horizon for me, and I wasn’t sure just which way to go with any of them.
We sat around the office for a lot longer than I had wanted to. Carol kept giving us nervous glances and apologizing for having to wait so long for Mr. Rogers. She even tried calling his cell phone a few times or sending him text messages, but he never responded to any of them. Abby would give me the occasional dirty look as she sank lower and lower into the chair she was sitting in, and she finally asked Carol if there was Wi-Fi here so she could plug in her laptop and do something more entertaining. Carol led her to the small conference room off to the side so she could at least entertain herself.
Finally, after about ninety minutes of waiting and me threatening to just leave and come back another time, Irv Rogers rushed through the door. It was obvious he was having a bad morning. His gray suit was all rumpled, his tie was mostly pulled out, and what little hair he had on his head was sticking up all over the place. He rushed passed me, slammed his briefcase down on his desk in his office just beyond Carol, and then rushed back out to where Carol and I were.
“This has been an awful morning,” he said to Carol as he straightened out his suit and fiddled with his tie. “My car wouldn't start at all this morning, so I called Greg down at the shop, and it took them forever to get a truck over to my house. Then they spent twenty minutes fooling around with the car trying to get it going and of course, it wouldn’t. After they finally towed it to the shop, I had to wait around to talk to Greg about it and then find a ride over here. He’s all the way on the other side of town. Otherwise, I would have walked.”
The other side of town is about a mile from here, I thought to myself. Taking a closer look at Irv Rogers, he was clearly in no shape to walk that mile without the risk of keeling over. He was overweight, and that was being kind, and he looked to be in his fifties. His face was beet-red just from getting angry, and that was probably enough to push him too close to having some kind of cardiac event.
After he calmed down a bit while ranting at Carol, Carol was able to interrupt him long enough to let him know who I was. Irv walked over and extended his sweaty palm to me, and I reluctantly took it and gave him a brief handshake.
“It’s nice to finally meet you Mr. Stone,” he said to me. “Please, come in my office.”
I followed him into the small office, and he closed the door behind us to give us some privacy. The office itself was very sparse, with his desk and a couple of chairs in front of it, a couple of bookcases and filing cabinets, his computer on his desk, and his law degree on the wall, along with a few pictures. Irv worked his way behind his desk and sat down with a large exhale, catching his breath. I hoped he would make it through the meeting.
“Now, let me see what I have here,” as he turned on his computer to get it going and took out a folder on his desk that I assumed dealt with my father.
“Your father’s will was pretty straightforward,” he said to me as he looked the papers over. “I had drawn it up for him years back. He left everything to you and, well, was very particular about making sure your mother wasn’t left anything, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t think my mother will mind,” I said to Irv bluntly.
“Yes, I imagine not. That was a messy thing years back I guess, wasn’t it? In any case, there’s the house, which was all paid for at the time of his death. There are some things you will need to cover to get the electricity and such turned on, and there may be some taxes owed, but beyond that, it’s free and clear. I’m not sure what exactly is in the house; I haven’t been over there in years, but that’s all yours as well. There’s also a matter of what he had in his bank account and his life insurance.”
“I didn’t realize he had any insurance,” I said to Irv, surprised my father was responsible enough to have life insurance. I also wondered why he would even bother with it. He wasn’t going to leave anything to my mother, that’s for sure, and I hadn’t seen him in almost fifteen years.
“Oh yes, he took a policy out, well, right after he and your mother split up. He kept up with the payments all this time, so it’s still active. You’ll have to deal with the insurance company directly to get that all squared away, but here’s the information on it.”
Irv handed me some papers, and I briefly scanned them. Apparently, he had a term-life policy for $200,000. I was shocked to see that. Irv then handed me his bank account information, and that shocked me just as much. Dad had over $75,000 in the bank. I knew he had his army pension to live on for all these years, but he must have really squirreled everything away.
“How did he have this much money?” I said out loud.
“Your father didn’t live on much,” Rogers said to me as he leaned back in his chair. “He had few bills since the house was paid for and I think he lived a pretty quiet life for all these years.”
I had lots of papers to sign to finalize things, and according to Irv, there would be more papers in the coming days as ownership of everything got transferred to me. He graciously offered to take care of it all for me, saying my father had paid for his services upfront to cover costs like this, another shocking statement to me.
He handed me the keys to the house, which included the keys to the front and back doors and the keys to the garage behind the house.
“Oh, there’s one other thing,” he said to me. Irv rose from his desk and lumbered over to a safe he had in the corner of the office. He got down on one knee (which was no easy feat for him, or for me to watch), pressed the buttons for the security code, and opened the safe. He took some things out and then walked back over to me, placing a small box and an envelope in front of me.
“What’s this?” I said to him.
“Well, the envelope is a letter your father had written to you and left it with me to be opened upon his death. The box is, well, your father’s ashes. That was another stipulation in his will.”
Dad’s final parting shot to me, I suppose, I thought to myself. I picked up the small box. It weighed more than I thought it would and leave it to Dad to not pay extra for an urn or anything. A plain brown box suited him just fine.
“I’ll let you know if I need you for anything else,” Irv said to me, extending his still sweaty hand once again. “Will you be around town for a bit?”
“Yes, I’ll be here for a while,” I replied, knowing I really didn’t know where else I was going to go at this point. I shook Irv’s hand and headed out of the office. I walked over to the conference room to corral Abby, who was typing away on her laptop when I came in.
“Let’s go, kiddo,” I said to her as she looked up from her keyboard. She gathered her things quickly and put them in her backpack and followed me out the door. We said a polite goodbye to Carol and walked out to my car.
“What’s that?” Abby said to me as she slid into the front passenger’s seat and put her seatbelt on.
I placed the box on the center console between the two of us.
“That’s your grandfather,” I said to her matter-of-factly, as I started the car.
“That’s gross Dad,” she said as she tried to inch away from the box.
“It’s his ashes; Don’t worry, he won’t jump out and grab you.”
I started up the car and headed over to Collins Drive where the house was. It was already almost noon, and it had taken much longer than I thought it would to get this stuff done.
“Where are we going?” Abby said to me, taking an interest in what was going on for the first time in a long time.
“Over to his house,” I said to her as I tried to remember exactly where Collins Drive was. I navigated my way through the side streets so we could get over to the house and see what was there.
“Why are we going there?” Abby asked, creeped out by what we might find there.
“Well, because it’s our house now I guess,” I said to her as we got closer to where the house was.
“No way!” she said with some excitement. “We have a house? Does that mean we are going to live here?” This was as happy and excited as I had seen her in a long time.
“I’m not sure yet, honey,” I said to her, trying to calm her down, so she didn’t get her hopes up too high. “I have to see what the house is like, what we need to do to it, and so on. There’s a lot of details we would still have to work out before we decide on something like that.”
I pulled into the driveway next to the house and drove back towards the garage. I parked the car and Abby and I both got out warily, looking at the back of the house. The house needed a new paint job for sure, and the lawn was well overgrown in the back and the front. We got up to the front gate and unlatched it letting ourselves in. Abby reached down and plucked something out of the grass and held it in her hands. It was a long blue ribbon, like what someone might use to tie their hair. She held it, studying it as we walked slowly up the rickety front steps towards the door of the house. We were both a little nervous about what we might find inside.