Norbert Norlander died a few hours after she had phoned him from near the Spanish Steps and his lawyer called her with the news. The phone chirped as she was taking a shower at 9:30 A.M. Late night in Oklahoma. She stood naked, dripping, by the bathroom sink, looking at herself in the mirror. The lawyer was polite, professional. She told Margie that the old man had simply lain down in bed that night and never awoke. “It was very peaceful.”
“Just the way he would’ve wanted to go.”
“Indeed. So—let me get to the point. In his most recent will, Norbert claims you are his daughter and his kids would like to clarify that.”
All she could think was What a sweetie pie that gruff old Norwegian was. In his gratitude, he had adopted her. She thought he had gone bonkers in the last phone conversation she’d had with him, but no.
“Is that so? Are you his daughter? His kids don’t remember him saying anything about this.”
“Well, his kids don’t have anything to do with it. I don’t remember him talking about them either.”
“Do you have any proof?”
“Proof? I think the fact that he sent me $150,000 to go to Rome says something about how he felt.”
“That was from his mother’s estate, but never mind.” The lawyer inhaled slowly. “Look. The kids don’t want some long draggedout court case. They just want to settle this. They’re willing to offer $250,000 for this whole thing to just go away.”
And a door opened in her mind’s eye, a door to the bright blue sky with a few white clouds drifting in it. “I think a half million would be better.”
The lawyer inhaled again. “I can offer you as much as three hundred fifty. I recommend you take it. I think that when you stop to think about attorney’s fees and the years it would take for this to go through the courts—”
Margie said she thought $350,000 would be just fine. She gave the lawyer the address of Associated Federal in Minnesota. And hung up. She sat down on the toilet. Hard to grasp. Too hard. A woman named Maria called her from New York in January and one thing led to another, and she did a good deed for an old man, and now this. Poor old guy. You read stories like this, she thought—a lonely tycoon leaves a million dollars to a woman who gave him back rubs, or a kind neighbor who mowed his yard, or the pizza delivery boy.
So where were his kids when he lay dying? Skiing in Aspen? They couldn’t be all that devoted if they didn’t know how bad he wanted Gussie’s grave decorated. Probably they’d refused to go to Rome. They didn’t even know he was all banged up in a nursing home and fixing to check out. So phooey on them. She’d take the money. Damned right she would.
She came down to breakfast and heard Evelyn ripping into some rich guy in a story in USA Today who had lost half his fortune to Bernie Madoff and now had to sell his homes in Kennebunkport, Santa Fe, and Bainbridge Island. “Well, boo hoo. Poor little you. Tell us about it. People are homeless and starving to death and you want to live in six different places at once. Let me tell you something. Argentina is not weeping for you and neither am I. Just get over yourself and suck it up and find something useful to do other than invest in junk bonds and ride around in boats drinking gin martinis. This is life, honey buns. It isn’t a rehearsal. You’re living on the same planet as everyone else so wake up and smell the coffee. And I mean it.”
Margie looked up Norbert on the Internet again. Northland Oil. He’d inherited from his father a chunk of an island off the Norwegian coast that turned out to have vast oil fields under it and from that he’d earned a small fortune. Like a true Norwegian, he kept his cards close to his chest, and the two bios she found were vague about amounts, but he’d given two million to the Tulsa Art Museum, so there was serious money around. She thought she should tell someone. Father Wilmer. Or Carl. In the past three months, she had, barely lifting a finger, realized a half million dollars. Success Comes to Margie Schoppenhorst.
She had accepted the $150,000 for herself and Carl to go to Rome on a patriotic pilgrimage to honor an American fighting man who’d given his life for his country, along with the members of her book club. She was not stingy. No, not at all. She had called up Father Wilmer one afternoon, and told him, “We’re going to Rome the end of March. You want to come with?”
“Oh, that’s too kind of you,” he said, and she could hear him about to say Sure, you bet, getting ready to spit it out. “You can find someone who’s a lot more fun than me. I’d only make people uneasy. Especially the Lutherans.”
“No,” she said. “We have a spot for you. I want you to come. Please come along. I am happy to pay your way.”
“Well,” he said, “a person only gets this chance once. I do have some cash squirreled away in a pastoral retreat budget. This sounds like just the ticket.” But she had offered to pay—she didn’t hoard her good luck. She had not offered to pay for the others, but then Mr. Keillor took care of that, so it wasn’t a problem. But she hadn’t been greedy. She had shared.
And now she felt no moral qualms at all about collecting a windfall. She had done the neighborly thing and reached out to Mr. Norlander in his last days and she had brought closure to an old story in his life and lent him some peace as he rode off into the sunset. And she had reaped a bucket of gold. Good for her.