we can borrow and what kind of mortgage we should get. I have to install it later. Which reminds me.”
“Oh, right,” Lois said, pulling the scattered paper out from under the cat, and sounding somber again. “Jackie, can you cancel Dad’s online account? Ted couldn’t figure it out.”
“Sure,” she responded, shrugging. “I can try. But I don’t know if I can do any better.” It amused her that Ted, who understood the inner workings of engines and robots, could hardly find his way around a personal computer. Now, suddenly, she thought of a part of the past she did know about and remember. “If you’re looking for a house, what about Grandpa and Grandma’s old place? What ever happened to that?”
“I’m not crazy about Gardena,” Lois said. “Anyway, it’s gone—he sold it right after Mom died.”
“But the money from the sale…” Jackie didn’t want to ask what had happened to it, because it brought up, awkwardly, the question of the will, which was going to be read that coming Tuesday.
Lois clearly caught the drift, though. “I don’t think he left much, but we’ll find out on Tuesday.” Now she and Ted exchanged a glance, which Jackie caught.
“What?”
“Actually,” Lois said, “the reason I wanted you to come over today has something to do with all that.”
Oh, God, Jackie thought. There’s going to be a problem. She and Rose disagree about something as usual, and it’s all going to explode over the will.
Lois stood and walked over to her desk, where she picked up a spiral notebook. Carefully, she pulled out a folded piece of paper, and then came back over and sat across from Jackie. “I’m wondering about the validity of a will,” she said, “written in 1964.”
“Whose?”
“Dad’s.”
“Is that what the lawyer’s going to read on Tuesday?”
“No,” Lois said. “This is a different one.”
Jackie wanted to ask her what exactly she meant, but Lois was acting so strange, looking at Ted again, that she decided to sit tight and wait.
“This one,” Lois continued, lifting the paper, “mentions things I’m sure the other one doesn’t. And I’m afraid there might be a conflict. Here—I think you should read it.” She handed it across the coffee table, and as Jackie took it, she watched the edges dip and rise. The paper was so thin that, even folded, she could make out the dark shapes of her fingers beneath it. The typed words were light, as if the ribbon had been running out of ink. She read:
September 22, 1964
I, Franklin Masayuki Sakai, being of sound mind and body, do bequeath the following items upon the event of my death:
1 My house and savings shall go to my wife, Mary Yukiko Sakai.
2 My car shall go to my wife.
3 All of my late father’s possessions, including his great-grandfather’s kimono and katana, shall go to my mother, Masako Sakai.
4 My books and photographs shall go to my daughters, Rose and Lois.
5 My baseball cards shall go to John Oyama, Jr.
6 My jazz record collection will go to Richard Iida.
7 My store, located at 3601 Bryant St., shall go to Curtis Martindale.
When she finished reading, she kept staring at the page. This will, this random list, was the kind of thing someone threw together in a panic and then forgot once the moment had passed. Lois, who was afraid of planes, made one every time she had to fly, earnestly telling everyone for days beforehand what she’d bequeathed them in the latest version.
“This stuff has already been dealt with, hasn’t it? I mean, I don’t know about the smaller things, but you just told me there’s no house. And I know that there isn’t a store.”
“Right,” Lois said. “He actually gave the cards to John years ago. And Richard Iida died, so Ted and I are going to keep the records.”
Ted, behind her, winked and gave a thumbs-up sign.
“You have any idea why he wrote this?” Jackie asked. “He wasn’t about to get on a plane, was he?”
But her teasing comment missed its mark entirely. “I just figured this out,” Lois said. “He was having an operation to get his appendix removed and, you know, he never trusted doctors after the way they handled his foot.” Jackie thought of the smooth, shortened end of her grandfather’s right foot; it looked as if the toes had been filed down. She remembered his slight limp, the hitch in his step, which might have passed for a jerky strut if he’d been younger.
“Well, I don’t think you have to do anything. Everything in the will is taken care of.”
“Not quite,” Lois said, and then she gestured in the direction of the bedrooms. “See, I found this will in a box of papers Dad kept in his closet. I was looking for the poem he read at Mom’s funeral, because I thought we might read it again. Anyway, there was a lot of stuff in it—old pictures and articles, even his war medals. I mean, all kinds of things I’d never seen before. And there was another box, too, which had ‘store’ written on it with a marker.” She looked at Ted, who turned and disappeared down the hallway. Jackie heard a door open and shut; then Ted reappeared, holding a stone-colored box which was big enough for a pair of boots or a hat. He set it down on the coffee table, and Lois nodded for her to open it. Which she did. And saw more money than she’d ever seen before, so much that her first impulse was to put the lid back on. But then she looked at it again, at all that green, all those Andrew Jacksons. “What the hell?” she finally said. “What’s this from?”
“The store, I guess, according to how he marked it.”
“How much is in here?”
“Almost $38,000.”
“Excuse me?”
“Thirty-eight grand,” Ted repeated, shaking his head. “Can you believe it?”
“Just sitting in the closet?”
“Yeah.”
Jackie put the lid back on, stood up, and walked across the room. At the entrance to the kitchen, she turned around. “But Lois, I can’t believe he would have just hidden this money for, what, twenty-nine years? Are you sure it’s from the store?”
“I’m not sure, but it seems to be.”
“Do we know if it’s mentioned in the current will?”
“I don’t think so. Like I said, as far as I know, he didn’t have much to leave. And to answer your question from before, the money from the Gardena house is gone. He gave that and the redress money to Rose a few years back, in order to pay for your law school.” Jackie hadn’t been aware of this arrangement. And it was more evidence of what she had taken from Frank—his attention, his money, his time. He was always there to fix her heater, or to build her a set
