The mahogany boardroom of the estate lawyer’s office was thick with tension.
Margaret, a 68-year-old retired schoolteacher, sat uncomfortably in the corner. Her reclusive neighbor, Mr. Sterling, had passed away last month. Margaret had occasionally brought him soup and retrieved his mail, but they were hardly close friends. Yet, the lawyer had insisted she be present for the reading of the will.
Sterling’s three wealthy, estranged children sat across the table, glaring at Margaret.
“To my neighbor, Margaret,” the lawyer read, adjusting his glasses, “I leave the entirety of the Elm Street estate and all its remaining assets.”
The room erupted. Sterling’s eldest daughter slammed her fist on the table. “She manipulated him! He had dementia! I am contesting this immediately and having you investigated for elder abuse, you thief!”
Margaret shrank back, terrified and confused. She didn’t want the house.
“Before you file the paperwork,” the lawyer interrupted, his voice cutting through the shouting. “Mr. Sterling anticipated this reaction. He asked me to play this.”
The lawyer pressed a button on a small digital recorder sitting in the center of the table. Mr. Sterling’s voice filled the room, sharp and entirely lucid.
“If you are hearing this, my children are likely threatening a kind woman,” the recording began. “But they don’t know what I hid in the walls of that house in 1985.”
Nobody Moved
There was a cough on the tape. Then a chair creaking. Margaret knew that chair. It was the green recliner by his front window, the one with duct tape on the left arm.
“Deborah, sit down. I know you’re standing.”
The eldest daughter was standing. She sat.
“I recorded this on March the fourth,” the voice went on. “Dale is holding the newspaper from that morning so nobody can say I didn’t know what day it was. Dale, hold it up.”
“He did,” the lawyer said. Dale Hatch. Bald, soft-spoken, a man who looked like he’d been born in a cardigan. “I have the paper and a physician’s letter from the same week. He was sharper than I am.”
On the recording, Mr. Sterling cleared his throat.
“On the night of October the nineteenth, 1985, I was driving home from the Elks lodge on Route 9. I’d had six beers and two whiskeys. I hit a man who was changing a tire on the shoulder. I didn’t stop.”
Margaret heard a sound and realized it came from her own throat.
“I killed him,” the voice said. “I want that said plainly, in a room, with witnesses. I killed him and I drove home and I went to bed.”
The younger son, Greg, said, “Jesus Christ, Dad,” to a machine.
Lisa, the youngest, put both hands over her mouth like a kid watching a scary movie.
Deborah didn’t say anything at all.
The Man on Route 9
Margaret had taught fourth grade for thirty-one years at Hollins Elementary. In all that time, she’d developed one habit she could never shake: when things got bad, she took attendance. In fire drills. At funerals. In the hospital once, after her gallbladder.
She did it now. Deborah. Greg. Lisa. Mr. Hatch. Me.
Five people. Six, counting the voice.
“His name was Walter Dunne,” Mr. Sterling said. “He was thirty-one years old. He sold insurance for State Farm and he had a flat on a blue Chevy Citation, and his wife was waiting for him at home with the porch light on.”
Margaret’s hand went out and found the edge of the table. The wood was cold. She’d expected it to be warm, for some reason.
Walt.
Her Walt. Who’d called her “Teach” even before she was one. Who’d been coming home from his brother’s in Clayton that night because she’d had the flu and didn’t go. Who’d been found at 6:40 the next morning by a man delivering bread.
Thirty-nine years. The police had a paint chip and nothing else. Hit-and-run. Case open, then case cold, then case just a cardboard box in a basement in the county building. She’d called every October for the first twelve years. Then every other October. Then she stopped calling and just sat on the porch on the nineteenth with the light on, which her sister said was morbid and Margaret said was none of her business.
Deborah was looking at her now. Everyone was.
“Margaret,” the voice said, softer. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I didn’t do any of this so you’d forgive me.”
The tape hissed for a while.
“In 1991 I sold the house on Briar Road and bought the one next to yours. I told the kids it was because of the property taxes. It wasn’t the taxes.”
Lisa said, “You moved there on purpose?”
The tape couldn’t answer her. It just kept going.
“I watched you put that porch light on every October. Twenty-nine years from my window. I took your mail in when you were at your sister’s. I shoveled your walk at five in the morning so you’d think it was the Petrovic boy.”
Margaret had thanked the Petrovic boy. Every winter. She’d given him twenty dollars every Christmas for shoveling he never did. He’d taken it, too, the little crook.
It Was a Deer
“Deborah,” the voice said.
Deborah flinched like she’d been tapped on the shoulder.
“You were in the back seat.”
Greg turned in his chair. “What?”
“You were twelve. You’d been asleep. You woke up when we hit him, and you asked me what that was, and I told you it was a deer.”
Deborah’s mouth opened. Nothing came out of it. She was a woman who sold commercial real estate in Charlotte and wore a watch that cost more than Margaret’s car, and right then she looked about twelve.
“It was a deer,” she said. To no one. “You said it was a deer.”
“I’m sorry,” said the recording, as if it had heard her. “I made you part of it without asking. You’ve hated me your whole life and you never knew why, and I think this is why. Kids know. Even when they don’t.”
Deborah pushed her chair back. Stood. Sat down again, hard, missing half the seat, and caught herself on the armrest. Greg reached for her and she slapped his hand away without looking at him.
“I had nightmares,” she said. “For years. About a deer standing up. Standing up on its back legs, in the headlights.” She laughed, a horrible little laugh. “Mom took me to a therapist. A therapist. In 1986. Nobody went to therapists.”
Margaret did not feel sorry for her. She noticed this about herself and didn’t like it, and then decided she didn’t have to like everything about herself today.
“The car went to my cousin’s body shop in Dunmore,” the voice went on. “He fixed the grille and the headlight and asked me no questions, and I paid him twelve hundred dollars cash. He’s dead now too. Everyone’s dead now. That’s the thing about waiting. Eventually it’s only you.”
Behind the Pantry
“What I took off that car is in the house. So is something that belongs to Margaret. Dale has the instructions. I want her to be the one who opens it, and I want the three of you there to see it, because I’m a coward and this is the only way I could think of to stop being one.”
A long pause. The recliner creaked.
“If any of you contests the will, Dale has a second copy of this recording and a signed confession, and he’s instructed to deliver both to the Lackawanna County District Attorney and to the Times-Tribune. Not to hurt you. So it’s on the record somewhere besides my head. Margaret, if you want it on the record anyway, that’s your call. It’s all your call. That’s the point.”
Click.
Dale Hatch pressed the stop button, which was unnecessary. He set his glasses on the table and rubbed his eyes.
“He told me what was in there,” he said. “Not all of it. I’ve got a contractor’s crowbar in my trunk, if anybody wants to drive over.”
Nobody said yes. Nobody said no.
Margaret stood up. Her knees popped. “I’ll get my coat,” she said, and it came out in her classroom voice, the one for field trips. Single file. Hands to yourselves.
They went in three cars. It was a Thursday, a little after two, and raining that thin cold rain that doesn’t seem to fall so much as hang around. Margaret rode with Dale. His car smelled like peppermints and dog. There was a tennis ball on the floor of the passenger side and she held it in her lap the whole way and didn’t think about why.
The house on Elm Street was exactly as she’d last seen it, the week after the ambulance. Same newspapers in a stack by the door. Same recliner. Same smell of Vicks and old coffee.
The pantry was off the kitchen. Shelves of canned peaches, Campbell’s, a box of saltines. Dale cleared the bottom shelf and pointed to a square of plaster near the floor that was a slightly different white from the rest. You’d never notice it. You’d have to know.
“He said about knee-high,” Dale said, and held out the crowbar.
Margaret looked at it.
“I can do it,” Greg offered.
“No,” she said. “Thank you.”
She got down on the linoleum, which hurt, and set the flat end against the plaster. Her first swing glanced off and took a chip out of the baseboard. Her second went through. The plaster was old and gave in a big dry chunk, and dust came out like flour, all over her good navy slacks.
She pulled the pieces away with her hands.
Inside, between two studs, there was a gray metal cashbox with a little handle on top. The kind you’d see at a church bake sale. It was heavier than it looked. She sat back on her heels with it in her lap, and the four of them stood over her in that tiny pantry like they were all waiting for a bus.
The key was taped to the bottom.
What Was in the Box
On top was a chrome ring, about the size of a saucer, bent badly on one side. A headlight bezel. One edge had a smear on it that had gone brown-black decades ago.
Lisa made a noise and left the room.
Under that, in a sandwich bag yellowed stiff as a potato chip, was a man’s wristwatch. A Timex with a stretchy gold band. The crystal was cracked straight across. The hands said 11:52.
Margaret knew this watch. She’d bought it at Woolworth’s for their second anniversary, and Walt had worn it every day, and the police had told her that his watch wasn’t found at the scene. She’d figured it was in a ditch. She’d figured some kid had picked it up.
“It was on the hood,” Deborah said. Her voice was flat. “When we got home. In the garage. I remember Dad picking something up off the hood and putting it in his pocket. I thought it was a rock.”
Margaret turned the bag over in her hands. She didn’t open it.
Under the watch was the part Dale hadn’t been told about.
Envelopes. A thick brick of them, held together with two rubber bands that had melted into the paper. Every one was addressed to Mrs. Margaret Dunne, 114 Elm Street. Every one had a stamp. None had a postmark.
The stamps changed as she thumbed through. Twenty-two cents. Twenty-five. Twenty-nine. Thirty-two. Thirty-seven. A Liberty Bell. A flag. Some birds. Forever stamps at the end.
She counted them. Of course she counted them.
Thirty-nine.
One for every October.
The top one was dated 1985 on the back flap in pencil. She opened it. The handwriting was neat and tight, a draftsman’s hand. Mr. Sterling had been an engineer at the Tobyhanna depot; she’d known that much.
Mrs. Dunne,
I saw your picture in the paper. You were standing at the funeral home holding your coat. You had it over your arm like you might leave any minute.
I was the driver. I am writing this to tell you, and I am going to mail it tomorrow.
I am going to mail it tomorrow.
That was all. Just that, twice.
She opened the last one. It was dated last October in a shakier version of the same hand.
Margaret,
You brought me split pea today. You said you made too much, which is what you always say. I think you know I eat it out of the pot standing up.
Your light was on tonight. I sat in the chair and watched it until it went off at 12:10. I’ve never once seen it go off before midnight. I know what time it was on his watch. I’ve known for thirty-nine years.
I’m not going to mail this one either. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you when I’m dead, because I’m not brave enough to tell you while I can still see your face. You deserve better than that. You deserved better than all of it.
The house is yours. It always should have been. It’s the only thing I have that’s worth anything, and it was paid for with years I took from you, so I’m giving them back the only way I know how.
W.H. Sterling
Margaret folded it along its old creases. She put it back in its envelope. She put the envelope back on the stack.
Greg was crying, quietly, with his fist pressed against his nose. Deborah was leaning in the pantry doorway with her arms crossed so tight she seemed to be holding herself up. Lisa was out on the back step. Margaret could see her through the kitchen window, smoking a cigarette she’d clearly bummed from someone years ago and kept in her purse for emergencies.
“Are you going to the police?” Deborah asked.
It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t anything. It was just a question.
“I don’t know yet,” Margaret said.
“Okay.”
“I might.”
“Okay,” Deborah said again. Then, after a second: “I won’t contest it.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
Dale had gone very still by the refrigerator, like a man who’d wandered into a church service by accident.
Twelve-Ten
They left around four. Greg shook Margaret’s hand, which was strange, and then he hugged her, which was stranger. Lisa waved from the car. Deborah sat in the driver’s seat of her rental for almost ten minutes before she started the engine, and Margaret watched her from the kitchen window, and neither of them waved.
Dale offered to drive her home. She said it was forty feet. He said he knew that. She said she’d walk.
She didn’t walk. Not right away.
She sat down in the green recliner with the cashbox on her knees. The tape on the arm was peeling at one corner. She pressed it flat with her thumb, and it came back up, and she pressed it again.
From this chair you could see her porch. Right through the front window, between his dead ficus and the lamp. Her porch, her railing, the light fixture Walt had installed crooked in 1983 because he never measured anything in his life.
She’d never once looked at her own house from over here.
The rain had let up. It was getting dark early, the way it does in March. Across the forty feet of wet grass, her porch light was off.
Margaret opened the sandwich bag. It crackled. She took out the Timex and slid the band over her hand. It was way too big for her; it hung on her wrist like a bracelet on a little girl. The crack in the crystal went right through the twelve.
She found the crown with her fingernail and wound it.
Nothing.
She wound it again, slower, and held it up to her ear, the way her father used to do with his pocket watch at the kitchen table.
Tick.
Tick.
She sat there in his chair in the dark and listened to it, and she did not get up to turn on her light.
—
Would you have taken the house? Tell me honestly.
For more neighborhood stories full of kindness and surprises, read about the HOA’s bulldozer and a widow’s beloved roses, a new neighbor who returned a lost book, and the crew that opened the Junk Lady’s garage.
