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thousand dollars. He left his old friend, Joe Parks, ten thousand and a Methodist seminary five hundred thousand. He bestowed thirty thousand on Mother. There was no mention of me, Velvet, or Cassie. That hurt. The remainder of the estate, the house and all the contents, including my great-grandmother’s table, he left to his “dear friend, neighbor, and caretaker, Ernest Dibber.” The estimate of the remainder of William’s estate, the stocks and bonds, and the contents of fifteen different bank accounts, was well over three million dollars.
    We sat very quietly for a moment or two while the news sank in, and then we all started to talk at once.
    â€œI can’t believe William had.…”
    â€œMy God, I don’t understand how.…”
    And Cassie was still on, “Son of a bitch!”
    Then we were quiet again. I looked at Mother and saw the unbelievable. I do not think I had seen her cry more than one tear since the copious amount she shed when my father died, but she was doing so now and with a vengeance. Suddenly I felt like a frightened little child. There was nothing I could do but reach out and take her hand. Cassie was equally stunned.
    â€œDon’t you cry, Gran! You’ll see! I’ll get that creep if it’s the last thing I do,” she promised.
    Mother wiped her eyes on one of the linen luncheon napkins.
    â€œYou don’t understand, darling. I’m not angry at that dreadful man. I’m angry at William!”
    â€œBut why, Gran?”
    â€œBecause he was a millionaire three and a half times over and he made my darling Abigail live a pauper’s existence, that’s why!”
    She stood and paced up and down the patio.
    â€œShe had to mend and scrape and do without, and all the while he was counting dividends and interest in his miserly little head. Can you imagine how she must have felt?”
    She stopped behind Cassie’s chair and gripped the back so hard her knuckles stood out like ivory knobs.
    â€œWhen Abigail died, I went through her closet trying to find a decent dress in which to bury her. I found nothing but rags. I had to dress her in something of mine because I wanted her to look nice.”
    She shook her head sadly.
    â€œHow could the man to whom she devoted her entire life treat her in so shabby a manner? How could William make his wife live in such abject poverty for so many years and then turn around and make a millionaire out of that obnoxious neighbor? William must have been out of his mind.”
    The tears started to make their way down her cheeks again.
    â€œIf you all will excuse me I think I’m going to lie down for a while. I’m suddenly very tired.”
    â€œOf course, Mother. Will you be okay?”
    She nodded her head and walked slowly back to the house. Cassie ran ahead of her and opened the screen door to the porch. She gave her grandmother a swift embrace and ran off toward the lane that led to the back field.
    I sat alone on the sunny afternoon patio with my thoughts whirling. Maybe a nap was the best thing when your brain was on overload. But I knew I could never sleep. Who would have ever suspected something like this? Certainly none of us could have imagined it, not in a million, not in three million years. That would be a year for every dollar. Wow! I thought, that is a lot of money. How does a man get that kind of money? Especially a man like William who was so quiet and unassuming. He had only held one job. He had never traveled outside of the state. When his parents went to visit relatives in Germany, William was in school and declined the invitation to accompany them.
    That must have been it! He must have inherited a good deal of the money from his parents. I had heard him tell stories about his father, a good stout German who had come to Louisville with his family in the 1800s.
    His grandfather was a successful merchant who opened several dry goods stores. When William’s father