Jane was right. Sebastian was right. I couldn’t put off meeting with my grandfather’s lawyer any longer. I needed to climb that mountain. I didn’t know what I would find; it could have been a dragon or Shangri La. I had to climb to the top to find out. Even though both Jane and Sebastian volunteered to keep me company on the four-hour drive up to Alders, in the end, I decided to take Sebastian’s advice and take Barkis. When I returned to the town where I had been happiest, I needed a companion that both loved me and didn’t talk.
Spring dawdled in the mountains. The azaleas in my apartment complex already had their gaudy Easter dresses on. The azalea and mountain laurel along narrow route 934 were still dreaming of spring. The only life along the whiplash turns blasted out of the mountainsides was the ephemeral redbud dancing between the pines and the occasional dogwood reaching its lobed fingers over the road. I followed the few hundred feet of pavement I could see at a time until the road hugged the mountain around a blind curve and opened out over a narrow valley. Alders was tucked in the valley like a sapphire in a pile of mica. Below me I could see the rusting machinery of the abandoned asbestos works. Someone was using the employee parking lot to store broken down school buses and a handful of smashed mail trucks.
As if I had been there the day before, I still recognized the plain granite pillar that marked the turn off for Alders. Barkis let out a bark and dove under the dashboard as I wrenched the wheel to the left and seemingly drove into space. The road down was scarred with broken tree trunks and the rusting hulks of trucks that had tumbled down the mountainside. Savvy truckers knew to take the long route around to come up through Black Mountain. PawPaw always took the treacherously thrilling road down from the ridge. Ruby’s short wheelbase and excellent suspension made bumping down the rutted road feel like a roller coaster rather than a death spiral.
A white-pillared bank, a Rite-Aid, and three churches marked the center of Alders. If the residents wanted to shop in a big box store or see a movie, they had to drive almost an hour over the mountain roads to Asheville. I found the lawyer’s office tucked between a bead shop and Hispanic market in the neat block of brick shops that were as old as the town. I pulled into a spot directly in front of the wide front window. The name William Longley, III, Esq. was painted in gilt and black letters across the bubbled glass. The paint on the final “I” was still sharp.
I collected my laptop and purse from the backseat but didn’t go inside right away. Barkis needed to take a potty break on the tiny grassy area beside the parking lot and I needed a moment to gather my courage. An enormous fichus tree dominated the many paned windows along the front of the offices. It was easily twice the age of the young man sitting at a massive mahogany desk. Dark shelves, sagging with moldering law books, lined the office walls, and moth-eaten oriental rugs covered the worn yellow pine floors. The young man and his sleek twenty-first century laptop seemed out of place in the nineteenth century furnishings. Once Barkis was relieved and packed back in the car, I pushed open the glass-paneled door. A bell tinkled happily over my head. The room smelled of stale cigarettes and late nights.
The young man jumped up and thrust his hand out to me. He was dressed in jeans and a rumpled white oxford open at the neck. I doubted his grandfather would approve. “You must be Ms. Blaine. How was your drive up?”
“It was fine,” I replied, taking his hand.
“Would you like a cup of coffee? Or an espresso? I have a great little espresso machine.”
“I would love a latte.”
He whisked a pile of folders off a black lacquered chair with a school crest emblazoned across the back piece and pulled it up to his desk. “You sit right down and rest a minute. I’ll be right back.” He stepped into an alcove to the side of the room. A moment later I heard the whir of a burr grinder and the click of a doser. Mr. Longley spoke loudly over the hiss of the espresso machine, “I owe you an apology, Ms. Blaine. I was unaware of the situation with your property until your stepfather showed up shouting at me.”
“So was I,” I called back. He emerged from the alcove kitchen and handed me a hand-thrown mug with a leaf drawn in the foam of the latte. “Thank you, Mr. Longley.”
“Please, it’s Bill. My granddad was Mr. Longley. Even my daddy was Billy.”
“And I go by Lara. My name may appear as Larissa in the paperwork, but I had it legally changed.”
“I saw that.” He set his tiny espresso cup down and opened his laptop. “I know you probably don’t remember me, but I remember you.”
“You remember me?”
“My mom used to say you looked like a little angel sitting in the front pew beside your grandmother and my brother, Jimmy, said you were the smartest girl in the first grade.” The little girl that lived in Alders all those years before was not completely gone. Happy memories of me had been living in the minds of the people here.
“Jimmy Longley? Does he have a big cowlick on the back of his head?”
“Totally bald now. He’s a lawyer, too. Lives out west with his third wife.”
I took a sip of my latte then placed it on the corner of the desk. I was afraid of what Bill would say to my next question and didn’t want to risk dropping the lovely pottery. “What exactly did my stepfather tell you?”
The young lawyer tilted back in his chair and smiled broadly. “He had some interesting ideas. He claimed that he had right of survivorship to all the holdings and got quite upset when I pointed out that they were never your mother’s to begin with. He tried to tell me that you had abandoned your mother—”
“Bullshit! I—”
Bill shrugged. “I didn’t pay him any mind. I remember my mother saying how broken up your grandparents were after you moved away, and, well, some unkind things about your mother.” Bill sat up and clicked his laptop to life. “Anyway, he said he was going to make you sign over the property. But I take it, since you’re here and he’s not, that didn’t happen?”
“No. No, it didn’t.”
“My granddad was the executor of your grandparents’ will and set up the agreement with the Methodist church.”
“What agreement with the Methodist church?”
Bill shuffled through a stack of yellowing file folders on his desk. “Hold on, it’s here somewhere. To be honest with you, when I took over the practice after my daddy’s stroke two years back, I never looked into the history of that house. Daddy had a lot of irons in the fire that needed to be attended to right quick. I haven’t even started to explore what’s in those files over there.” I followed his eyes to a wall of walnut file cabinets. “I’m afraid my daddy was not very organized.”
I took another tentative sip of my latte as he continued to flip through the file folders. Bill was an excellent barista. “You might not have realized this, but I wasn’t aware that my grandparents even had a will, never mind that I was the beneficiary, until I received those papers.”
“My grandfather was supposed to inform you of your inheritance when you turned eighteen, but apparently we didn’t have contact information for your mother.”
“We moved a lot.”
Bill drained his espresso cup. “I take it your mother was estranged from her parents?”
I nodded. “You could say that.” I clicked the heels of my red shoes together for courage. “Does it say anything in the files about who my father was?”
Bill put a hand on top of the stack of files. “No, there isn’t much about either of your parents in the files. I have a copy of your birth certificate and social security card but the father line is blank.”
Typical, Mama. Just leave him out all together. Why think about his feelings? “How much do you know about my family?”
“Not a huge amount. I know that your grandparents and my grandparents were good friends and that you lived here for a while when you were little.” Bill found the file he was looking for. He ran his hand through his sandy hair as if struggling to form the right words. “My grandfather was a good man but an unconventional lawyer.”
“Unconventional? Is that what you meant when you referred to an agreement with a church?”
“Yeah, well, in order to cover the cost of maintaining the house and the property taxes, my grandfather allowed the Methodists to use the place to house unwed mothers.”
“Your grandfather had a sense of humor.”
Bill blushed and played with his empty cup. “Like I said, the church was using it to house unwed mothers, and for the past few years, they’ve been letting immigrant families stay there until they get on their feet. I can give them thirty days notice to vacate.”
“No, don’t do that,” I said. “Not yet.” I liked the idea of a family living in my grandparent’s house. Grammy would have liked that. “I don’t know what I want to do with the house. I won’t be living in it, but I’m not sure if I want to sell it either.”
“You don’t need to make any decisions right away. I’ll speak to the church council and get a full accounting of what they have done for upkeep and get an appraisal of the property value.”
“Thank you, Bill. That would be helpful.” I took out my laptop. “What I’m most interested in today is the other holdings. Exactly how much of a share do I own in those old mines?”
“That I know.” Bill presented me with an exhaustive inventory of the holdings. “You have a small interest in the Howell mine and a large share of the old 43G2 mine.”
“Why does that sound familiar?” I rustled through my memory banks. I knew I recognized that name.
“Do you know anything about minerals?”
I smiled sweetly at Bill. “Quite a bit actually,” I replied.
“Then perhaps you’ve heard of olivine.”
Olivine occurs naturally along with mica and feldspar. The other minerals have a steady market value but are relatively common minerals. Olivine, on the other hand, is rare. “Aren’t people using that for carbon dioxide abatement?”
Bill’s eyebrows shot up. “You do know your minerals.”
“It’s part of my work.” I sat up straighter in my chair. “How much of that mine do I own?”
“51%,” Bill said with a sly smile. “In your absence, my father reinvested your dividends.” Although the Longleys were unconventional lawyers, they had been excellent executors. Those old mines made me a millionaire several times over.
***
On the way out of town, I drove past my grandparents’ house, now my house. The house looked drab. It needed some paint around the windows and a good power washing. There was a blue Buick parked in front. A woman jumped out as I parked across the street and let Barkis out.
“Miss Larissa?” the woman said. “I’d recognize you anywhere. You look just like your grandmother in the pictures hanging in my mother-in-law’s hallway.”
“Should I know you?” I asked.
“I’m Jillian Longley. Bill’s mom? He called me and said he had a feeling you might come by the old place. We can’t go inside, but we can poke around the yard. Do you remember me? My parents were the Oystermans?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Never you mind. You were just a little bitty thing last I saw you.”
“Did you know my grandparents well?”
“Sure, sure. My mom and Elise played bridge every week.”
“Did you know my mother?”
Jillian’s face colored. She looked away into the backyard. “Of course. It was a very small town back then.”
“Did you know my father?”
“No, I can’t say that I did. Your mother was away for several years and when she came back you were already walking. Oh, how your grandparents doted on you!” A renewed sense of loss tugged at my heart. Strangers had known I was loved, when I hadn’t. “Oh, listen to me going on. Let me show you what’s been done around here. You’ll see the house has been made serviceable but the ladies of the church have maintained Elise’s garden. Just the way she left it.”
Jillian led me up the driveway to the backyard. It was exactly the way I remembered it. The rose bushes needed trimming, the lilies were bumping into each other, and lamb’s ears covered every open space, but it was still Grammy’s garden. For a moment, I felt like I was still six years old and nothing bad had happened yet.