ROBERT PARKER STEVENSON
ROBERT PARKER STEVENSON dropped his son off at a buddy’s house. The two boys were planning some major computer game challenges along with two other friends.
He used the three names professionally because it was different. There were a lot of Roberts or variations such as Bob, Rob, Robbie, etc. He was the only Parker.
As he turned into the cul-de-sac, he noticed there were plumbing and electrician trucks in front of Medora’s home. He was on his way to see Medora's daughters at Margo’s tiny house and studio. Probate had gone smoothly: the sale had given the girls their asking price and the estate sale had given them about 12% more than they expected.
Parker preferred to go to people’s homes. In a way it made him feel like he was in a modern Agatha Christie movie without Poirot and no murder. Years ago, he would have just deposited the survivor’s checks directly into their accounts. He might still do an electronic transfer, but he made a personal visit to discuss it. The visit wouldn’t be billed.
One advantage of being a small-town lawyer, he could have a personal touch in a way that had been impossible when he worked for a big firm. No matter that he made less. He and his family had enough.
Because of traffic he was running late for his appointment. He hated being late. He called Margo to tell her his car was fenced in by cars and couldn’t move.
“No problem,” she said. “Everyone’s here. That’s Heather, Grayson and me. And oh yes, Henry just dropped by. I’ve asked him to stay, if that’s okay.”
Parker had been in Grayson’s much, much younger brother Jeff’s class. He and Jeff had been on the football team, taking advantage of the status to get the best girls. That is until Jeff broke his leg and missed the rest of the season. Then Bobby Grant, another buddy, had a head injury and despite all kinds of pressure, Parker’s mother rescinded her permission for her sons to play.
“I don’t care,” she said to everyone who asked her to change her mind. “My son’s brain is more important than any stupid football game.”
Jeff and Parker were the best players on the team, which had been undefeated until then. After the team lost the rest of the season’s games. The boys, more or less shunned, found themselves hanging out together.
His car moved two car lengths forward.
After graduation, the bond, weak at best, fell apart. Grayson went to Babson and became an accountant. Parker went to UMass Amherst. His top grades won him a place at Harvard Law.
Parker, no longer called Bob, Bobby, Rob or any other diminutive of Robert, failed to get a Supreme Court or even a top law firm internship, but once he passed the bar on the first try, he found a place at the second-best law firm in Boston.
Parker smiled at the memory. He always thought it sad when someone said about an Olympic athlete, “Too bad, he only won a silver medal.” Silver was pretty damned good.
The traffic inched forward. A woman pushed a baby carriage on the sidewalk next to the line of traffic. She looked like Marcy, his first wife, but she had remarried and moved to Switzerland with her Swiss banker husband who could afford to keep her the way she wanted.
He didn’t miss her. As the newbie in the law firm, he had put in 80 hours a week or more. Marcy didn’t mind. More time for her to shop.
Was it really 10 years ago that he decided his life left him no time for living and he took over his father’s family law practice? Marcy was furious at the income drop and filed for divorce. When they signed the final papers, she looked at him and said, “Loser.”
He felt like a winner, including the improvements in his golf game. Nancy, his second wife, was totally different. She was looking forward to hearing about how Margo was getting along in her tiny house and studio. They even talked about trying a tiny house themselves, once his boys were grown and out of the house.
The traffic opened up.
Five minutes later Margo welcomed him.
HEATHER LOUD POWERS
HEATHER PULLED OUT from the library parking lot. Library work shouldn’t be stressful, nor should the reading hour for four-year-olds. Despite that, she was still shaking. Four-year-old Bobby McClellen had thrown another hissy fit. He took all the books he could reach off the shelves and tore some of them. The vase of flowers on the desk he threw across the room. The glass shattered.
She suggested to his mother she take him home, but the woman said he would quiet down.
Heather wanted to tell her to get out and not come back, but her husband was Robert J. McClellan, Jr., a Selectman, who also headed the committee that financed the library.
Heather knew if she complained to Grayson, he would tell her that she didn’t need to work. She could stay home, be a lady of leisure. No way. She didn’t work hard for her Degree at Simmons College to not use the studies as a librarian. Granted her compromise with her husband was to work only part time.
Grayson insisted that she keep her salary, much of which she saved. It was there for Grace if she needed it, for whatever, after she got out of college.
Because she lived close to the library, she pulled into her driveway within minutes. She probably could have walked, but there were no sidewalks.
Once inside, she went straight to the kitchen to make an egg salad and coriander sandwich on dark bread and open a Coke. No, she wouldn’t tell Grayson about Bobby.
Her mobile rang. “Heather, are you okay?” It was the head librarian. “We have to do something about that child,” the women agreed, but they weren’t sure what politically.
By the time she hung up, had finished eating and put the dishes in the dishwasher, she was calm. She needed to pick up the house a bit. Heather was one of those women who pre-cleaned her house for the cleaning woman.
Esperanza came on Mondays and Thursdays. Now that it was just her and Grayson, she didn’t need her four times a week like she had when Grace and her friends created so much mess.
Upstairs were two small rooms that once had been an attic. One was Grayson’s office, the other Heather’s.
She used hers more than he did. He preferred to stay later in the evening at the office and have his home time 100% at home. She used hers more as a reading room.
By 1:30 she was in her office looking at the boxes of papers and photographs from her mother.
She sat on the floor and started to remove the photos. Some were obviously of women in long dresses, men in straw hats and even ties although they were on picnics. Some of the men were playing golf with hickory clubs. Heather had no idea who they were. She wished her mother had written on the back at least their first names.
A little girl with a huge hair bow was probably Medora after WWII. Sometimes the child looked sweet, but there were some when the devil shone in her eyes. There were others of her mother in prom dresses with different boys, but there were more of their father.
Some were of Margo or her, she couldn’t tell which from their baby pictures, not that it mattered.
Her mother wore a full-skirted floor-length dress. A banner saying Happy New Year was over the heads of her and her father. Her mother had a mink stole, something that was later stolen and never replaced. “There was no way your father would have bought me a full mink coat, although Lord knows I tried.”
Even after he’d been dead for a couple of decades, Medora still thought she should have had a mink coat or at least her husband could have used the insurance money to replace the stole. No way was she going to buy a mink coat with her own money.
Heather stared at the photo: her mother wore the leaf ring, the one with the diamonds on her left hand. That proved it existed. It wasn't her imagination,
What happened to it? They hadn’t found a ring like that in any of their preparing for the estate sale. Nor had the estate inventory list and prices included any such ring.
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