Melissa gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She told me to call her if I wanted to talk, and I said I would.
I returned to the parking lot with Dad and the lawyer. Radar walked slowly beside me. Braddock’s Lincoln was parked next to our humble Chevy Caprice. There was a nearby bench in the shade of an oak whose leaves were going gold. “Perhaps we could sit here for a few moments?” Braddock asked. “I have something rather important to tell you.”
“Wait,” I said. “Keep walking.” I had my eyes on Mrs. Richland, who had turned to look just as she always had on Sycamore Street, with one hand raised to shade her eyes. When she saw we were going to the cars—or appearing to—she got into hers and drove away.
“Now we can sit down,” I said.
“I take it that lady is the curious type,” Braddock said. “Did she know him?”
“No, but Mr. Bowditch said she was a nosy-parker, and he was right.”
We sat on the bench. Mr. Braddock hoisted his briefcase onto his lap and unlatched it. “I said we’d have a good conversation, and I believe you’ll agree when you hear what I have to tell you.” He took out a folder, and from the folder a small sheaf of papers held with a gold clip. At the head of the one on top were the words LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
My dad began to laugh. “Oh my God, he left something to Charlie?”
“Not quite correct,” Braddock said. “He left everything to Charlie.”
I said the first thing that came to mind, which wasn’t exactly polite. “You’re shitting me!”
Braddock smiled and shook his head. “This is nullum cacas statum, as we lawyers say—a no-shit situation. He left you the house and the land it stands upon. Quite a piece of land, as it happens, worth at least six figures. High six figures, given Sentry’s Rest property values. Everything in the house is also yours, plus a car currently in storage in the town of Carpentersville. And the dog, of course.” He bent and stroked Radar. She looked up briefly, then put her head back on her paw.
“This is really true?” Dad asked.
“Lawyers never lie,” Braddock said, then rethought what he’d said. “At least they don’t in matters such as this.”
“And there are no relatives to contest it?”
“We’ll find that out when the will goes through probate, but he claimed to have none.”
“Is it… is it still okay for me to go inside?” I asked. “I mean, I have a bunch of stuff there. Mostly clothes, but also… um…” I couldn’t think what else I had at Number 1. All I could think about was what Mr. Bowditch had done one day earlier that month while I was in school. He might have changed my life while I was taking a history quiz, or shooting hoops in the gym. It wasn’t the gold I was thinking about just then, or the shed, or the gun, or the cassette tape. I was only trying to get my head around the fact that I now owned （or soon would） the top of Sycamore Street Hill. And why? Just because I’d heard Radar howling in the backyard of what kids called the Psycho House one chilly April afternoon.
Meanwhile, the lawyer was talking. I had to ask him to rewind.
“I said of course you can go in. It’s yours, after all—lock, stock, and barrel. At least it will be once the will is probated.”
He put the will back in the folder, put the folder back in his briefcase, snapped the catches, and stood. From his pocket he fished a business card and gave it to my father. Then, perhaps remembering that Dad wasn’t the named legatee of a property worth six figures （high six figures）， he gave another one to me.
“Call if you have questions, and of course I will be in touch. I’ll ask that the probate process be expedited, but it still may take as long as six months. Congratulations, young man.”
Dad and I shook hands with him and watched him go to his Lincoln. My father isn’t ordinarily a cussing man （unlike Mr. Bowditch, who was apt to drop a goddam into pass the salt） but as we sat there on that bench, still too stunned to get up, he made an exception. “Holy fuck.”
“Right,” I said.
9
When we got home, Dad brought two Cokes from the fridge. We clinked cans. “How do you feel, Charlie?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get my head around it.”
“Do you think he has anything in the bank, or did the hospital stay clean him out?”
“I don’t know.” But I did. Not much in Citizens, maybe a couple of thousand, but there was the bucket of gold upstairs and maybe more in the shed. Along with whatever else was in there.