The voice is male, older, and with an accent that sounds like honey poured over gravel. Deep South, but not Atlanta South.
“Yes, this is she.”
“Well, I am mighty glad I reached you. My name is Harlan Tucker, and I’m an attorney up here in Copper Creek, Georgia, calling you about your great aunt Mavis Flanigan.”
I blink, searching the memory bank of my brain. Mavis. The name sounds familiar, but only barely, like a shadow at the edge of family gatherings or maybe a name my mother mentioned with pursed lips and careful disapproval, as she did most people.
“I’m sorry, did you say Mavis Flanigan?”
“Yes, ma’am. Your grandmother’s sister, if I’ve got my genealogy right. She passed away last week, and I’m the executor of her estate. She’s left you something in her will, but I’m afraid you will need to come on up here to Copper Creek to sort it all out.”
I sink onto the small stool that we keep in the kitchen, my mind racing. Great Aunt Mavis. I think I met her once, maybe twice, when I was really young. I remember her big hair, loud laughter, and my mother hustling me away with an unusual urgency.
“I am very sorry for your loss,” I say automatically, the words feeling strange. “But I am not sure I understand. My mother never really spoke about her.”
Harlan chuckles, a warm sound that crackles through the phone.
“Oh no, I don’t imagine she did. Mavis was, well, she was something else. Your grandmother’s family was not too pleased when she moved up here to the mountains and bought herself a bar.”
“A bar?”
“Well, more of a honky tonk. The Rusty Spur. Been a fixture of Copper Creek for going on almost fifty years now. Mavis bought it about thirty-five years ago and ran it right up to the very end.”
I have no idea what to say about any of this. I feel like I am in some sort of fever dream. My great-aunt, whom I barely remember, lived in a town I had never heard of and ran a bar. Sounds like the setup to a joke, except Harlan’s voice is gentle and serious.
“Mr. Tucker, I do appreciate your calling, but I do not think this has anything to do with me. I mean, surely Aunt Mavis had other family or people who were closer to her.”
“She did not, actually,” he interrupts. “Mavis never married and never had children. Your grandmother, of course, passed on years ago, and your mother.” He pauses delicately. “Well, Mavis kept track even if they did not speak. She knew that your mother passed. Sent flowers to the funeral, though I suspect you never even saw the card.”
I did not. My mother’s funeral was a blur of white lilies and murmured condolences. I was much too numb to notice anything.
“Ms. Whitfield, I do not want to get into too many details over the phone, but Mavis left you her entire estate - the bar, the property, everything. There are some conditions attached, which is why I need you to come up here in person. So, can you make it to Copper Creek sometime this week?”
I look around the kitchen, at the pile of bills on my desk, at the empty studio that is slowly bankrupting me. What do I have to lose? A nice little trip to the mountains might reset my brain and give me some new ideas.
“I can come tomorrow,” I hear myself say. “What is the address?”
That night, I could not sleep. I lie in my bed, this queen-sized four-poster piece of furniture that came with my apartment and is too formal for any actual comfort, and I stare at the ceiling.
My mind keeps circling back to the phone call, to the name that apparently was buried in my memory for decades. Mavis Flanigan. The wild one. The black sheep.
I remember now. Fragments are resurfacing like debris after a shipwreck.
My mother’s voice, tight with disapproval. “We don’t discuss Aunt Mavis, Eleanor. She made her choices, and those weren’t choices that a lady makes.”
I was maybe seven years old, asking why we never visited the great aunt who sent me birthday cards with five-dollar bills tucked inside. My mother had taken the card from my hands, looked at it with distaste, and dropped it in the trash.
“Your grandmother’s sister decided that propriety wasn’t important to her. She left a perfectly good life in Atlanta to run some sort of ‘establishment’ in the mountains, and we don’t associate with people who make those kinds of choices.”
So I never asked again. My mother’s word was law, and her disapproval was a force of nature that shaped my entire existence. So if she said we did not talk about Aunt Mavis, then Aunt Mavis simply did not exist.
But apparently Aunt Mavis did exist quite thoroughly. Enough to run a bar for thirty-five years. Enough to build a life in a town called Copper Creek. Enough to remember her great-niece in a will despite decades of family silence.
I get out of bed and walk to my laptop, opening it on the kitchen counter. I do a quick search for Copper Creek, Georgia, which brings up a modest Wikipedia entry.
Population one thousand eight hundred forty-seven. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Known for its annual Bluegrass Festival and “charming small-town atmosphere.”
I search for The Rusty Spur and find a Facebook page whose cover photo makes me physically recoil. It is an old wooden building with a big neon sign featuring a cowboy boot and a spur, the kind of place that probably has peanut shells on the floor and plays country music at volumes that violate noise ordinances.
