“How are you? Getting on okay? Staying busy?”
“I’m all right. I’m writing a screenplay. A second one. I couldn’t get anyone to look at the first one except for Max. He liked it. Very much, in fact. But he’s not a studio man. I’m staying with it, though.”
“Yes, I recall Elwood telling me what a wonderful assistant you had been to him since the accident. You must have learned a lot working for him.”
June cracked a smile. She couldn’t help it. “Indeed.”
“And you’re staying at Max’s house these days, right?”
“Yes. In his pool house. With Algernon.”
“Algernon.”
“Elwood’s cat.”
“Ah. Yes.”
The lawyer cleared his throat and leaned forward in his chair, a wordless sign that polite small talk was over. “I just want to reiterate again how I’m deeply sorry about the loss of the Malibu house in that fire. It’s a terrible tragedy. Not only that, but you could have stayed in it all these months while…well, you know. While the estate was in flux.”
“Yes.”
“Right. On to our business, then. I’m sorry this day has come but it did have to come, as you know. I take it you’ve been informed the judge ruled for a declaration of death yesterday?”
“Yes. I…I was in the courtroom. In the back.”
“Of course. So, Mrs. Blankenship, I believe from our earlier phone conversation that you are aware that Elwood left the majority of his estate to Peter Brink and Carlton Brink, sons of the late Ruthie Brink, yes?”
“I’m aware.”
“The reason I called you in before I speak to the Brink sons is because I have a letter from Elwood that I was instructed to give to you upon his death and before the reading of his will and the disposition of his assets. With the judge’s ruling in the books, I am now free to do that.”
The lawyer opened a desk drawer and withdrew a sealed, ivory-hued envelope. He reached across the desk and handed it to her.
June took it with slightly trembling hands. “When did he give this to you?”
Markham hesitated a moment. “A number of weeks before…before last Christmas.”
They were quiet for a moment. Then the lawyer stood.
“Shall I give you a few minutes?” he said.
“Yes. Thank you.”
The lawyer left the room, closing the door behind him.
June stared at Elwood’s script on the front of the envelope, at the four letters of her name. At the elegant way he made hisJs.
She hadn’t seen his script in more than a year now. The last time he’d written anything to her it was that note bidding her farewell…
In the twelve months since the house had burned down and Melanie and Eva had left, June had felt like she was suspended between two worlds: the world where Elwood was alive and the one where he wasn’t. Somewhere in the middle of that she’d been hovering, tethered to neither.
She’d been so naïve to think a missing person could be declared dead in just a couple of months, even with a suicide note. If there’s no body, there’s no physical evidence of a death. If there’s no physical evidence of a death, there is no declaration of death. Four months after Christmas, when she began to cautiously inquire when a person was legally considered deceased, she’d been astounded to hear it was often seven years, and that if any family member wanted it to happen sooner, they had to bring a petition before a judge, which June had done, as Elwood Blankenship’s only living relative, a month ago. Everything that had belonged to Elwood, including his cat, had been in estate limbo, the entirety still owned by a man who seemed to have simply vanished into thin air.
What bothered June most when she learned all of this was knowing the three rosebushes that kept vigil over Elwood’s grave wouldn’t be cared for in a limbo state, and that was simply not acceptable. She’d gone out to the property every Sunday since the fire to water,tend, and nurture them. The rest of the lot was a weed-filled jungle at the twelve-month mark, but not those three rosebushes.
It was because of them and what they meant that she petitioned the court, and likewise it was because of them she would beg those Brink boys at three o’clock today when she met them to let her buy the land.
But first there was this letter.
