Everyone is moving slowly, deliberately, as if time itself is just taking a coffee break.
I check my reflection in my rearview mirror, smooth a non-existent flyaway from my French twist, and step out of my car.
The air hits me first. It is clean and cool, scented with pine. It is so different from Atlanta’s humid exhaust that I actually pause to breathe it in.
“Nice car,” someone says.
I turn to find an elderly woman looking at my Lexus with curiosity. She is wearing a purple tracksuit and sneakers, her white hair permed into tight curls.
“You lost, honey?”
“No, I, well, I have an appointment with Harlan Tucker, the attorney.”
The woman’s face lights up.
“Oh, you must be Mavis’s great-niece, the one from Atlanta.” She says “Atlanta” the way someone might say “Mars.” “Harlan’s office is right up those stairs there, just above the hardware store. Go on up, the door’s never locked.”
“Thank you, I?—”
But she has already moved on, waving at somebody else, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with the feeling that everybody in this town will know my business before I can even finish climbing the stairs.
I find the door she pointed to, a narrow entrance wedged between the hardware store and something called Birdie’s Alterations, and climb a steep staircase that creaks under my low heels.
At the top, a frosted glass door reads Harlan Tucker, Attorney at Law, in gold lettering that is peeling at the edges.
I knock, and a voice calls out, “Come on in, it ain’t locked.”
The office is exactly what I expected and nothing like what I expected all at the same time. It is small, barely bigger than my studio’s supply closet, and every available surface is covered with papers, books, and file folders. It looks like somebody’s file cabinet exploded in here.
Bookshelves line three walls, stuffed with legal volumes and what appear to be local history books. A ceiling fan rotates lazily overhead, desperately needing dusting and stirring the warm air. The single window looks over Main Street, and through it I can see the town square with its white gazebo and towering oak trees.
Behind the massive wooden desk sits a man who looks like he was ordered out of a catalog of Southern lawyers. He looks to be in his sixties, with a shock of white hair that seems to have its own weather system, wild eyebrows that move expressively as he looks up at me, and a rumpled seersucker suit that has seen better decades. Reading glasses are perched on the top of his head, apparently forgotten as he squints at me.
“Ms. Whitfield.” He rises, extending a hand with genuine warmth. “Well, I’d recognize those cheekbones anywhere. You look just like your great-aunt did at your age. God rest her soul. Please, sit down.”
I shake his hand, firm grip, calloused palms, nothing like the limp fish handshakes of Atlanta’s professional class, and settle into the chair across from his desk. It is surprisingly comfortable, worn leather that has molded to accommodate countless clients before me.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Tucker. I have to admit, this was all very unexpected.”
“Harlan, please. We don’t stand on ceremony much around here.” He settles back into his chair, which creaks in protest. “I imagine it was unexpected. Mavis told me you probably didn’t know much about her.”
“I didn’t know anything about her, really. My mother…” I pause, trying to choose my words carefully. “My mother just didn’t discuss her.”
Harlan nods. “Your grandmother’s family was what we might call particular about propriety. When Mavis left Atlanta back in ’89 to buy a bar in the mountains, well, it did cause quite the scandal. They more or less pretended she ceased to exist.”
“But she kept sending me birthday cards.”
His eyebrows rise slightly. “Did she now? I didn’t know that, but it sounds like Mavis. Stubborn as a mule about the people she loved, even when they didn’t love her back.”
Something in my chest tightens. “I mean, I never got to read them. I’m embarrassed to say that my mother threw them away.”
Harlan makes a sound that conveys sympathy, understanding, and judgment toward my mother all at once.
“Well, Mavis knew that, knew the situation. She didn’t hold it against you, dear, if that’s what you’re wondering. She kept track of you over the years. Your graduation, your engagement, your mother’s passing. She was real proud of you, even from a distance.”
I don’t even know what to say to this. A woman I never knew was proud of me? It feels like receiving a gift I did not earn and cannot return.
“Mr. Tucker. Harlan. You mentioned on the phone that there were conditions attached to this inheritance.”
