Sharyn Mccrumb_Elizabeth MacPherson_07 Read Online Free PDF Page B

expecting you this afternoon, ma’am?”
    Her gray eyes widened in surprise. “Why, I hope so, young man! I took the trouble to write you.”
    Bill began to shuffle through the papers on his desk when she leaned over and announced, “There! You have my picture right there on top of your desk calendar.” She pointed one white-gloved finger at the sepia portrait of the Edwardian beauty.
    Bill stared from one to the other. “You … I mean to say … Is that—”
    She nodded with a satisfied little smile. “Oh, yes! It’s me all right. A good many years ago, before I married Mr. Dabney, rest his soul. My name is Flora.”
    â€œBut why did you send me this picture?”
    Flora Dabney took a deep breath. “Well, young man, I’ll tell you. I get rather tired of being dismissed as
just
an old lady, so I thought I’d make a proper first impression on you. Just so you’d know who I really am, underneath this sixty years of erosion.”
    Bill smiled. “I wish I’d known you then.”
    The old lady’s eyes twinkled. “I expect I’d have led you a pretty dance, Mr. MacPherson. Now let us get to the matter at hand. My friends and I would like you to sell our house. It’s alovely old colonial with Corinthian columns, ten bedrooms, fireplaces—”
    â€œMrs. Dabney! Whoa! Wait! Stop. I’m really sorry, ma’am. You’re a little confused. You see, I’m a lawyer, not a real estate agent. But if you’d like me to find you one …” He reached for the telephone book.
    â€œWe don’t want a Realtor,” she said, motioning for him to put the book away. “We need a lawyer. You see, there are only eight of us left and the house is just too big. The upkeep is very expensive, so we thought we’d see about selling it.”
    â€œEight of you own a house?” Bill’s mind was reeling at the legal intricacies of such a transaction.
    â€œIt amounts to that,” said Flora Dabney. “There is a deed of something or other, leaving the house to the widows and daughters of Confederate veterans.”
    â€œA deed of trust? A deed of covenant?”
    â€œYes,” said Flora Dabney, as if the two were interchangeable, which they certainly were in Bill’s mind, because he could not remember the details of that particular law class.
    â€œYou want to sell the Home for Confederate Widows?” asked Bill.
    â€œWomen,” Flora Dabney corrected him. “There are only eight of us widows and daughters left.”
    Bill did a rapid mental calculation. The CivilWar had ended one hundred and twenty-something years ago. Surely the supply of widows and daughters must have run out. “How could there still be eight of you left after all these years?”
    â€œWe are the daughters of men who fought in the War as boys and who married quite late in life. My father was fourteen when he ran off to join the Confederacy. My mother was his third wife, whom he married in 1920, when he was seventy and she was twenty-three. My memories of him are quite dim by now, of course. The only actual widow is—”
    â€œAnd the eight of you want to sell the home? Can you do that?”
    â€œYes. The deed says we can. You see, the house was bequeathed to the female dependents of Confederate veterans by a Colonel Phillips. He was a Confederate colonel, you see, and the house used to be his. It dates from before the War.”
    Bill didn’t bother to ask Miss Dabney which war. As far as she was concerned, there hadn’t been another one. So the house was about a hundred and fifty years old. He’d have to go and take a look at it.
    â€œColonel Phillips was a generous man,” Flora was saying. “But he was nobody’s fool. Of course when he was drawing up the terms of the gift, he realized that sooner or later there would be no more dependents to benefit fromhis bequest.