At my hospice patient’s will reading, his daughter laughed out loud when the lawyer said he’d left me the plastic band off his wrist. “Eight months wiping his chin and you get his garbage,” she said, while they split $212,000. Then the lawyer asked me to read the number on it out loud.
His great-granddaughter, Kaylee, was seven, and for the last three years she’d slept in the back bedroom of his house.
The day we buried him, her mother came and got her.
She left her backpack on his porch swing.
I’d sat with Jim every Tuesday and Friday for eight months.
Kaylee did her spelling words on the tray table of his hospital bed while I read him the box scores, because his eyes were gone and his ears were not.
He’d ridden for sixty years. His motorcycle stayed in the carport under a gray cover, and men in old leather vests came by on Sundays and sat on his porch and didn’t say much.
Nobody from his family came on Tuesdays.
Or Fridays.
In March he asked me a strange question.
“When she gets scared, who does she go to?”
I told him the truth.
“You, Jim. And me, lately.”
He nodded like I’d passed something, and he asked me to keep coming Tuesdays no matter what.
The last Friday, he had me cut the band off his wrist with my nail scissors.
It was the one from his ER stay in March, gone yellow, his name and a long number printed on it.
“Don’t lose it,” he said.
He died that Sunday.
Three weeks later, a letter from his lawyer asked me to come to the reading of his will.
The office was in Chillicothe, over a bank, and the dish of mints on the table only had the green ones left.
Jim’s daughter Sherry was already there with her daughter Tiara and Tiara’s boyfriend, Finn.
Kaylee was in a chair against the wall.
Sherry looked at me and then at the lawyer.
“Why is she here?”
“Mr. Berger asked for her,” the lawyer said. His name was Hector Aguirre and he didn’t look up from his papers.
Tiara said Kaylee’s name to tell her to sit up straight.
Just her name. Not even loud.
Kaylee’s shoulders went up to her ears.
Then she got off her chair and came around the table and stood next to me.
“Can I sit on your side?”
I said yes before I thought about whose side it was.
She held onto the sleeve of my sweater with her whole fist and didn’t let go.
Hector read for a long time.
The house went to Sherry and the truck went to Tiara. The money in his accounts, $212,000, was split between them.
Sherry squeezed Tiara’s hand under the table.
His motorcycle went to a man named Matthew.
“His biker buddy,” Finn said, and laughed.
Then Hector turned a page.
“To Rekha Pillai, the band from my wrist.”
That was it.
Sherry laughed so hard she had to put her hand flat on the table.
“Eight months of wiping his chin,” she said. “And you get his garbage.”
Finn had his phone up. He was recording me.
I had the band in my coat pocket in a sandwich bag.
I don’t know why I’d brought it.
Tiara stood up.
“Kaylee. Off her. NOW.”
Kaylee’s fist got tighter on my sleeve.
She didn’t move and she didn’t look at her mother.
“Are you deaf?” Tiara said. “I said NOW.”
That’s when the windows started to shake.
It came up the street from the river end, low at first, then louder than the air conditioner, then louder than Tiara.
Finn went to the window.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he said. “It’s his whole biker gang.”
I counted from where I sat. Fourteen motorcycles, backing in along the curb in front of the bank, one after another, like they’d practiced it.
Sherry stopped laughing.
Hector set down his pen.
“There’s one more instruction,” he said. “Mr. Berger asked that whoever holds that band read the number on it out loud, in this room.”
“This is a JOKE,” Sherry said. “He was out of his mind for months.”
“He was not,” Hector said.
My hands didn’t work right getting the bag open.
Kaylee watched me do it.
I read the number, all nine digits. I’d seen them on his wrist every Tuesday and every Friday and never once said them out loud.
Hector got up and went to a metal cabinet in the corner.
He came back with a thick folder.
The number I’d just read was written on the tab in black marker.
Tiara looked at the folder and then at Kaylee’s hand on my sleeve.
“What is that?” she said. “Hector, what IS that?”
He didn’t answer her.
Boots on the stairs.
A lot of them.
The door opened and a big man with a short silver beard came in first, his vest soft and gray at the edges, his face set hard.
Thirteen more came in behind him and stood along the back wall without a word.
Kaylee said, “That’s Grandpa’s Matthew.”
Matthew didn’t look at Sherry. He didn’t look at Finn’s phone.
He looked at Tiara’s hand, which was reaching across the table for her daughter’s wrist.
Tiara stopped.
“SHE IS MY DAUGHTER,” Tiara said, to Hector, not to Matthew.
“Mr. Berger named fourteen executors,” Hector said. “All of them are present.”
“Executors of WHAT?” Sherry said. “He gave us EVERYTHING.”
Hector opened the folder, turned it around, and slid it across the table until it touched my hands.
“Not everything,” he said.
Kaylee let go of my sleeve and took my hand instead.
Page one
The top page was a court order. Ross County Juvenile Court, three years ago in June. It gave legal custody of Kaylee Mims to James R. Berger. At the bottom, on a line marked consent of parent, Tiara had signed her name with a little circle over the i.
The second page was a motion. It asked the court to name a new legal custodian for Kaylee if James R. Berger died.
The name typed on it was mine.
Next to my name was a line with nothing on it.
Behind that were fourteen more pages, each one a statement, each one signed at the bottom by a man.
Kaylee leaned on my arm to see. She couldn’t read most of it. She found my name anyway and put her finger on the R.
“That’s his custody paper,” Sherry said. “He’s dead. So it’s dead.”
“The order ended when Mr. Berger did,” Hector said. “That’s correct.”
“So she comes home with me,” Tiara said. She looked at her mother first. Then she said it again, to Hector.
“Today she does.”
Sherry put her purse on her shoulder like she’d won something.
Tiara came around the table. Matthew took one step off the back wall, and Tiara stopped, and then she started again, slower, and took Kaylee’s other hand.
Kaylee let go of mine. She kept my sleeve until she was all the way to the door.
When they were gone, Hector tapped the date on the motion.
“He signed that from the ER bed,” he said. “March fifteenth. He told me you were there the night before.”
March fourteenth
Kaylee called me at 11:40 that night.
In January I’d written my number on an index card and stuck it to Jim’s refrigerator under a magnet from a tire place, and I’d made her say it back to me twice.
“Grandpa’s on the kitchen floor,” she said. “He’s talking. He says don’t call anybody.”
I live eleven minutes from his house. I made it in eight.
He was on the linoleum by the stove with a dish towel folded under his head. Kaylee had put it there. He’d gone for a glass of water in the dark so he wouldn’t wake her, and his legs had quit on him.
“Don’t you call anybody,” he said to me.
I called 911 from my knees.
At the ER they took him back and put the band on his wrist. Kaylee and I sat out front under a television that was showing a cooking show with the sound off. She fell asleep across two chairs a little after two. I put my coat over her.
The nurse told me they’d called the emergency contacts on his chart. Sherry was first. Tiara was second.
Nobody came through the sliding doors for him.
Around four, a young woman in a gray sweater stood at the glass of the inner door for a minute, looking at the chairs. I took her for somebody waiting on triage. Then she wasn’t there.
At six Matthew walked in with a grocery bag of Kaylee’s school clothes, because Jim had called him from the bed and told him which drawer. He looked at her asleep under my coat. He looked at me. He didn’t say anything.
I drove her to school that morning in yesterday’s shirt.
That spring I’d put $1,800 down on a one-bedroom in Columbus, two blocks from my sister Ileana, starting the first of December. I’d told Jim about it on a Friday.
“Too many lanes in Columbus,” he said.
The week after the ER, he asked me who she goes to.
That night after the reading, I sat at my kitchen table with the folder and read every page in order.
The fourteenth statement was Matthew’s. It started like this:
At six in the morning on March fifteenth, the hospice volunteer had her coat over the child.
The porch swing
The other thirteen were short. Men who’d sat on that porch every Sunday for years, writing down what they’d seen in the handwriting of men who don’t write much.
Who got Kaylee off the bus when Jim couldn’t make the steps. Who sat in the gym for her spring program. Who brought the pink cupcakes on her birthday.
Nine of them wrote the volunteer on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Every one of them wrote that nobody from the family came.
Matthew’s ended different. In March Jim asked me who she goes to when she’s scared. I said the hospice lady. He said that’s what all of you say.
Taped inside the back cover was a sealed envelope. Jim couldn’t see to write anymore, so it was in Hector’s typing.
Tiara. From Grandpa. After Mrs. Pillai signs.
I didn’t open it. I didn’t sign anything either. I sat there until the furnace kicked on.
At the funeral, Sherry had stood up front and said she talked to her daddy every single day. I’d sat with him seventy-one times. His phone rang during four of them.
Tuesday morning I drove to Jim’s house for the backpack.
There was already a lockbox on the front door. Matthew was in the carport with the gray cover folded over his arm, putting air in the tires of a motorcycle that was his now.
The backpack was on the swing where she’d left it. It was purple, and the zipper pull was a plastic strawberry.
“Sherry had the realtor out Thursday,” Matthew said.
“Where’s Tiara living?”
He looked at me a while.
“The apartments behind the Kroger. 14B.” He set the cover down on the seat. “Jim’d tell you not to go alone.”
I went alone.
Finn opened the door with his phone already up.
“It’s the hospice lady,” he said, to the phone.
Tiara came up behind him and took the backpack out of my hands without touching my fingers.
“You don’t come here,” she said. “You don’t know where I live.”
From somewhere down the hall, Kaylee said my name.
Tiara shut the door before I could answer her.
Connie
Finn put both videos up that night.
The first one was Sherry with her hand flat on the table. The second was me in the hallway at 14B, holding a purple backpack, with words across the bottom: now she’s stalking us.
By Wednesday morning it had been shared around Chillicothe enough that the woman at the bank drive-through asked if I was okay.
Connie called at ten. She coordinates the volunteers. She’d trained me four years ago, the month after my husband passed.
“Rekha, you know the rules,” she said. “No gifts from patients. No contact with the family after.”
“It’s a hospital wristband.”
“It’s on Facebook,” she said. “With our name in the comments.”
She was taking me off the schedule until they reviewed it.
“Give it back to the lawyer,” she said. “Let the family sort out the family. You did a good thing for eight months. Don’t make it into this.”
“He asked me to keep coming Tuesdays.”
“He’s not there on Tuesdays anymore, honey.”
Ileana called at noon about measuring for curtains in December. I let it ring.
At 9:50 that night my phone rang again.
“It’s me,” Kaylee said, very quiet.
“Are you okay?”
“Mommy and Finn are going to Kentucky Saturday. To Finn’s mom’s.”
“Are you going?”
“I’m staying with Grandma Sherry. At Grandpa’s.” She breathed into the phone. “Grandma sold my bed. I sleep on the couch now.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you still have Grandpa’s bracelet?”
“I do.”
“Okay.”
Behind her, a woman said, “Who are you talking to?” The line went dead.
The number on my screen was Jim’s house phone. I’d called it every Tuesday at nine to say I was on my way.
The tailgate
Thursday at nine I signed the blank line in Hector’s office. The dish of mints was full again, all colors.
He filed it at eleven and gave me a copy with the stamp still wet. The hearing was set for December sixteenth.
“Saturday they’ll be in Kentucky,” I said. “Tiara will.”
“And Kaylee will be on Sherry’s couch,” Hector said. “The court doesn’t move faster because we want it to.” He looked at the envelope in my folder. “He said after you sign.”
Friday afternoon, Jim’s truck was backed up to the stairs at 14B with the tailgate down. Finn was carrying a television. Tiara was sitting on the tailgate taping a box shut.
She saw me and stood up.
I held out the envelope.
Finn set the television down and got his phone out of his pocket.
“Put it away, Finn,” Tiara said.
He looked at her. He put it away.
She opened the envelope standing up. Inside was a sheet of hospital paper, the kind they give you at discharge, folded in four. On the back, in pencil, in handwriting with a circle over the i:
Grandpa. I came at 4. She was asleep on that lady’s coat and I didn’t wake her up. Don’t let Mom have her. Whatever you do. T.
Under it was a card in Hector’s typing. I did what you asked. The last page is yours. Grandpa.
The last page was a consent form. Her name typed under a blank line.
Tiara read the pencil one twice.
“He kept it,” she said.
“You were at the glass,” I said.
“Your coat had a hole in the pocket.” She folded the paper back into four. “Her hand was through it.”
Finn said, “Babe. What is that.”
She didn’t answer him either.
“She’s on the couch,” Tiara said. “Mom’s got her bed listed on Marketplace for sixty dollars.”
“I know.”
She folded the consent page and put it in the back pocket of her jeans. She didn’t sign it.
“Not here,” she said. “Ten tomorrow. Grandpa’s.”
Then she looked at the street, where there was nothing parked but her truck.
“Bring all of them.”
Saturday, ten o’clock
I called Matthew from the parking lot of the Kroger. Then I called Hector and asked if he’d bring his notary stamp on a Saturday.
“I’ll bring two pens,” he said.
At ten the bikes were already backed in along Jim’s street, fourteen of them, nose to tail past the realtor’s sign. The men stood on the sidewalk, not on Sherry’s grass.
The truck was at the curb with the boxes tied down under a blue tarp. Finn sat in the cab with the window up.
Sherry came out on the porch in her slippers.
“Get those men off my street.”
“It’s the county’s street, Sherry,” Matthew said.
“I’m calling the sheriff.”
Nobody stopped her. She didn’t call.
Tiara got out of the truck and spread the consent page on the hood. Hector set the stamp next to it.
Sherry came down the steps.
“Don’t you dare,” she said. “You signed her away once. You know what people said about you? About me?”
Tiara uncapped one of the pens.
“He did this my whole life,” Sherry said. “He gave his Sundays to these men. He gave my mother’s swing to the porch and his motorcycle to him.” She pointed at Matthew without looking at him. “And now he gives my grandbaby to the woman who wiped his chin. For free. Do you know how that sounds in this town?”
“Mom,” Tiara said.
“You sign that and you don’t call me from Kentucky. You don’t call me at Christmas. You hear me? You’re done.”
Tiara signed.
Hector stamped it and signed under her.
“Until the hearing,” he said, “Kaylee lives where her mother says.”
“With her,” Tiara said, and pointed the pen at me.
Sherry looked at me for the first time since the bank.
“Eight months,” she said. “And you got all of it.”
Then she looked at Tiara.
“I sold the bed,” she said. “She can sleep on your floor in Kentucky for all I care.”
She went up the steps and inside.
Finn rolled the truck window down an inch and then rolled it back up.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. It was the email from Connie. We’ve decided to end your volunteer placement, effective today. Thank you for your four years of service.
I put the phone back in the pocket with the hole in it.
The screen door opened. Kaylee came out with the purple backpack already on.
The first Tuesday in December
Sherry put Jim’s porch swing out at the curb with the couch when the house sold.
Matthew and two of the men brought it over in the back of a trailer and hung it on my porch with new chain. They sat on it after, and didn’t say much, and left before dark.
Ileana’s building rented my one-bedroom to someone else. The $1,800 went with it.
The letter from hospice is in the kitchen drawer with the rubber bands and the twist ties, and the band is next to it in its sandwich bag.
Tiara calls on Sundays at seven, from Finn’s mother’s house in Kentucky. Some Sundays she calls at seven-thirty.
The hearing is on the sixteenth. Matthew says all fourteen will be there.
On Tuesday the bus lets Kaylee off at the corner at 3:20.
She comes up my walk and drops the backpack on the swing and leaves it there swinging.
At the kitchen table she spreads her spelling words out next to the paper.
“Read me the scores,” she said, and pushed the sports page across to me.
If this one stayed with you, send it to somebody who keeps showing up on the Tuesdays when nobody else does.
For more unexpected biker stories, read about the deaf granddaughter whose snow cone stand was stomped flat and the biker who told someone to “print that”. And there’s another keepsake with a story behind it in the six numbers punched into a dead friend’s dog tag.
