A Small Fortune (15 page)

By the time Willow knocks on the door to retrieve her computer, I’ve been wringing my hands for an hour.

I swing the door back and pull her inside. “I need the fax number of your office.”

“Whoa.” She stumbles in. “OK. Hi there.”

“I figured something out. At least I’m starting to figure it out.”

“Can we sit down? Because it looks like your head is going to explode.”

“It is. Listen,” I say as I continue to stand. “I think this has all got something to do with an investment my mother left me in her will. It’s from Switzerland. I’m sure that’s what the lawyer said. I mean, he said it nineteen years ago, so I can’t remember word for word, and of course I was pretty distraught at the time, my mother had just died—”

“I just had a nap. Can you start over?”

“This fund wasn’t worth anything at the time, it hadn’t been worth much of anything I don’t think, for decades. The lawyer said that it came with odd preconditions and that it was too bad my mother insisted that all of her assets go into it because the shares had this terrible track record and even if it ever did amount to something I’d have to go to Switzerland to get it out!” I pace the room with my fists pressed against my clenched teeth.

“I’m not following you,” Willow says. “If there’s no money in it, then why is your husband after it?”

“I tried to check it online just now and nothing showed up except numbers, something that looked like codes. I don’t know if there’s money in it or not. It doesn’t say what’s in it. I’m just going on a feeling. He wants whatever it is, or maybe he just wants to use it for something else. Either way he can’t get to it because of the conditions in the will, and that’s why I need your fax machine.”

“You’re just going on a hunch?”

“I’m going on a vibe. A big vibe. A vibe as big as a wave crashing over my head.”

Willow yawns and shakes her head. “Can’t argue with a vibe.” She agrees to run out and purchase another disposable phone with the cash I give her. “Let’s just hope that for once business stays slow and no one notices the office is closed.”

When Willow returns I immediately get the lawyer on the line, though it’s now the lawyer’s son, Marc Jacobson the second, who took over the business after his father passed away.

“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” Jacobson says. “I can’t just fax this stuff over without proof.”

He isn’t even trying to be helpful.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll fax you my passport picture and Social Security number. Do you need anything else?”

“A signature. Something that has your signature beneath a written request.”

“It’s on its way. And do me a favor. Send the entire will. Every piece of information you have.”

“We normally charge for this sort of thing.”

“So send me a bill. I’ll pay it the moment I get home.”

“I could just charge it to your husband’s bank account.”

“Why would you do that?”

“It’s just that I already have it. The one I used when I sent copies over to him.”

“What copies?”

“Of the will. And the information about the trust.”

“Why would you do that? Everything is in my name!”

“Um, no. Both of your names are here in my office. You gave him permission to have access, at least to the information.”

“But my mother left everything to me. I wasn’t even married when she died.”

“All I can tell you is that his signatures are right next to yours.”

“When was the last time he requested a copy?”

“I need your written signature before I can give you that information.”

“You just gave me information without the signature.”

“That’s all I can give you over the phone.”

“Fine. Fine! But make sure you include everything with the fax. Anything at all that pertains to my mother’s will. I can’t call back again.”

Forty-five minutes later Willow arrives at my door with a stack of papers the size of a novella.

“I think he added some things just so he could charge you extra,” Willow says.

I don’t remember this much paperwork, though the truth is I barely remember anything about that day in the lawyer’s office, and then later at the bank, moving through a fog, shaking Jonathon’s hand, agreeing to have dinner with him. The whole thing took place as if in a dream.

“You’re a gem,” I say to Willow. “An absolute lifesaver.”

“I can’t wait to see what you find in there.”

“By the way, any more phone calls from the police?”

“Nothing.”

“Anything in the news about the guy who escaped from the hospital?”

“Benicio?” Willow teases.

“Yes. Benicio.”

“I checked the local news. I didn’t see anything but there may be more on the evening news so I’ll check again.” She gestures to the stack of papers in my hand. “Do you want me to come back after I get off work and help you go through all that? Bring you some dinner?”

“I would love that. Thank you.”

I toss the pile onto the bed, thank her again, and lock the door. I don’t even know where to begin.

I sit down and sift through the pages in the order they were sent. Legalese. I go back and start over. Slower. Like trolling through a river of mud. “Good God,” I say out loud. How is anyone supposed to make sense of this?

Then the sight of my mother’s loopy signature stabs me in the heart. It isn’t sorrow I feel, it’s anger. If she hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

There’s a note from Jacobson apologizing for the fact that his father passed away before the file was fully completed. When he took over, the file had been overlooked. He’s recovered several letters that were removed from a safety-deposit box but left forgotten in an attached file. He’s enclosed copies of them in the fax as well. Again, he apologizes. It isn’t like his office to make such mistakes, but surely I can understand what it’s like in the aftermath of a parent’s death. He also includes the dates when Jonathon made requests. There are two. The first, shortly after Jonathon and I were married when I must have signed something giving him permission to the files. The second, several weeks ago, just before Jonathon suggested we take a vacation. I understand now that he was desperate to cover his debts. He started combing through anything he could think of, searching for a way out. He found a solution. That look on his face when we were heading out the door for Mexico was one hundred percent relief. He was drunk on his own cleverness, his own dumb luck.
Oopsy.
A small fortune has been right there the whole time, lying next to him for eighteen years. “I love you, Cee,” he said with enough emotion for me to believe it. Maybe it wasn’t a lie after all. I’m his ticket out. I’m going to save him. Oh how he loves me.

I sift through the papers until I come across what appears to be an investment fund. At the bottom of the last page is typed
See attached note
. It’s a handwritten letter. I don’t recognize the handwriting. It isn’t my mother’s. It looks as if a very old person wrote it using an ancient, abandoned style of cursive. On closer examination I see that there are actually two letters. One signed by Annaliese Hagen. The other, Sonja Hagen. Sonja was my mother’s mother who died before I was born. I know very little about her. Annaliese would have been Sonja’s mother, my great-grandmother.

I recall the few conversations I had with my mother about our ancestry. My mother was the first U.S.-born child in her family. She had no interest in the past and apparently neither did her own mother. According to my mother, all Sonja ever told her was that she herself had become an American; her husband, my grandfather, had lived and died an American; and my mother was American, too. There was no need to concern herself with the rest. The only thing my mother seemed sure of was the fact that women in the family have never had very good luck. Not in love, and not in business, which they seemed to take an interest in regardless.

I read the letter from Annaliese to Sonja.

Dear Sonja,

Let me start at the beginning, even as I’ve come to the end, even if you think you already know all there is to know. I promise you do not.

Growing up in Zürich I always dreamed of being a chemist. This, of course, is nothing new. Nor is the fact that my family saw this dream as little more than the fantasy of a foolish girl. My father insisted I become a teacher for grade school children. If a girl had any sort of intellectual promise this was what was allowed her in my day. She could teach boys to follow their dreams, while teaching girls to be girls, as if they couldn’t figure out such a thing on their own.

I did what I was told. I never knew any woman to rise above teaching. I never knew any woman to even try. I was too young and naive to believe I could make a difference. But not a day has gone by in my life where I haven’t felt the weight of that decision, the weight of such regret.

But what I’ve never told you is this: I came close to being recognized as a chemist when I invented a cold remedy together with a chemistry student, a young man I had known since we were children. We used a good portion of the money I earned from teaching for the research, and in two years’ time the remedy was selling very well. It was obvious to everyone in town that I was a woman doing fine on her own. I was in no need of a husband, and this caused my family a great deal of stress, particularly my father who was embarrassed by me and who, in so many words, accused me of favoring women over men. The truth was I was financially better off than many of the men we knew. I was an unmarried woman with money in the bank. I didn’t need a man, and for this they despised me. For this they believed I deserved to be punished.

One evening as I was leaving the Metzgerei, two men stopped me just outside. They shoved me back into the alleyway until I found myself in the lane where the Lautens left their trash. The men circled me like hungry hounds. They said it was time someone showed me what a woman was supposed to be doing. I could smell the liquor on their breath. I could hear shoppers the next lane over, and yet no one came when I screamed.

It pains me to share this part of my life with you, but to leave it out would be to lie, to pretend it never happened, to make as if it had no bearing on what came next.

My dear daughter. You know what they did to me. Afterwards, I stumbled out onto the street. Mothers saw me and clutched their children to their sides. Husbands hurried their wives in the opposite direction. I staggered home alone, my face bloodied and swollen, my dress torn and soiled. No one helped me to heal during the awful weeks that followed as I tried to come to terms with what those men had done to me. I became a disease others did not want to come near. The weeks of waiting to see if I might be with child were a torment. My own sister asked me where I found the will to live. But it wasn’t my life I wanted to take. It was theirs. Why was I asked such a question while they walked the streets with their heads held high?

That was many, many years ago. It took time, but I moved past that day in both body and spirit. I did not give my life to those men. I did not let them take away my right to happiness. My right to love and pleasure. What they did was not my fault. And yet I admit that even after all these years I’ve never understood how two grown men could have done such a thing to an innocent young woman. Who knows what motivates the hearts of men? In this sense my father was right about me. I prefer the hearts of women.

I did not become pregnant then. Don’t fear that one of these men turned out to be your father. But if my prospects of ever finding a husband before this happened were low, they were hopeless after that.

The exception was your father. I married my friend the chemist, Walter Hagen, or should I say, he married me, claiming to have loved me his whole life. In time I came to love him, too, even when he decided to take sole credit for our cold remedy and claimed to his colleagues that I had lied about my part in formulating it. The truth was he couldn’t live with their chiding, nor could he live with the fact that I had never set foot in the science lab of a university and yet I knew what he knew. I devoured every science book I could get my hands on, including the ones he left lying around unread as he busied himself in the laboratory. I eavesdropped on conversations between him and his colleagues in the salon. I absorbed everything into the deepest parts of my being. And I forgave him for what he had done. I understood that he lived beneath the weight of the same establishment as me.

By the time you arrived, Hagen Pharmaceuticals was thriving. We lived better than anyone in our corner of town. I had few true friends outside of my own sisters and brothers, but my life, once you were in it, could not have been better. I was fascinated by your insatiable curiosity. You taught me the truth about the intellect. You were my scientific proof that we are all born with a strong, healthy dose of intellectual curiosity. Male, female, what does it matter? Your questions, your answers, were no different than those of your male cousins, though in some instances, I must confess, yours were far more complex than theirs.

Nearly ten years went by during which it seemed impossible that anything should ever go wrong. The townspeople had come to respect me, as our company employed so many of the families. They depended on us for virtually everything they had.

But of course, nothing truly lasts. People became mysteriously ill, and over time it was discovered that our cold remedy contained arsenic. How it got there I never knew. It was not part of the original formula your father and I had devised. Was he to blame? Or was it a mistake? I knew in my heart that he had put it there. Arsenic in small doses makes people feel very good, very alive, and they would no doubt come back for more of the remedy. It is when arsenic builds up over time that it becomes deadly. He knew this. I knew this. We were chemists after all. And he sold it anyway.