I looked up at the address on the thick white door casing of the old brick building, then back to the letterhead of the law firm Williams, Willig, and White, 702 Bay Street. I stared at the brass numbers, my mind still unwilling to grasp how I’d ended up more than a thousand miles from home.
I climbed the three steps, holding down my skirt so it wouldn’t expose the ridged scar on the side of my leg. I pulled on a heavy brass doorknob, needing both hands to open the large door, then stepped into a well-appointed reception room that looked like it had once been a foyer to a grand home. Old pine floors, polished to a sheen that didn’t quite obscure the centuries of heel marks and scratches that gave the wood character, creaked beneath my feet as I walked toward a large mahogany reception desk.
A brass nameplate with the name Donna Difloe introduced the middle-aged woman behind the desk. She looked up at me and smiled as I approached, her rhinestone cat’s-eye glasses beneath a cap of frosted blond hair catching the light from her desk lamp. She smiled at me with brightly painted pink lips, and I wondered whether I’d need to start wearing at least lipstick now that I’d moved down south.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m here to see Mr. Williams. I have an appointment at eleven.”
Her eyes quickly took in my navy skirt and white blouse and makeup-free face, but her smile didn’t fade. “Merritt Heyward?” She said my name as if she recognized it.
I nodded. “I’m a little early. I don’t mind waiting.”
She rose. “He’s expecting you. This way, please.”
She led me down a hallway where a dark green runner had been thrown over the wood floors to cocoon all sound. Pausing outside a thick, paneled door, she said, “I’m sorry for your loss. I remember Cal when he was growing up. Such a sweet boy.”
It had been almost two years since Cal’s death, and her condolences surprised me. But no more so than her calling Cal a sweet boy. The person he’d grown into had been hard to know, an impenetrable character hiding inside the imposing body of a man strong enough to scale ladders and carry people out of burning buildings. A man whose own anger smoldered inside of him like a fuse, waiting for a spark.
“Thank you,” I said, wishing I could tell her that Cal remembered her, too, and had said nice things about Ms. Difloe. But he’d never spoken of her, nor of his family or Beaufort. And I had never asked, feeling it a fair trade to avoid questions about my own family. Ashamed, I looked away as she opened the door and stepped back.
The office was large, with a wall full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with the requisite heavy leather-bound legal texts, and framed diplomas decorating a side wall. A large desk, even larger than Ms. Difloe’s, looking to be about the same vintage as the house, sat in front of the bay window facing the street but slightly above street level.
The man who stood to greet me was completely white haired, but appeared to be in his sixties. He looked like a lawyer should, complete with wire-framed glasses, a sweater vest, and the aroma of pipe smoke heavy in the room. He came from around his desk and took both my hands inside his large ones.
“Mrs. Heyward. So nice to meet you in person. And may I say again how sorry I am for your loss.”
Like Donna Difloe, when he said my name it was with familiarity. I assumed he must have known Cal, too, as a boy. He led me to a chair on the other side of his desk and waited for me to sit before returning to his own chair. He didn’t say anything at first, as if waiting for me to speak.
Unnerved, I smiled, then blurted out, “I didn’t know Cal was from Beaufort. In the seven years we were married he never spoke about his family, or growing up here. I always assumed that he had no family.”
Years of being a lawyer had schooled Mr. Williams’s face into a smooth mask of concerned evaluation, hiding any emotions my words might have evoked. He patted his hands on a neat stack of papers, his only concession to his surprise. Clearing his throat, he said, “The Heywards are an old Beaufort family, since before the Revolution.”
“Yes, you explained that on the phone. You said their house was built in the seventeen hundreds.”
“Seventeen ninety-one, to be exact—although generations have made changes and additions so it looks more Greek Revival than Federal. It’s why Cal’s grandmother left it to him, wanting to keep it in the family, you see. She wasn’t aware that he’d predeceased her.”
I swallowed, as if the reproach I heard in his voice were directed at me. “Of course. Which must seem so odd to you now, to be speaking with me about it.”
His smile was gentle. “You were his wife, and I’m sure Cal would be pleased to know that his family’s home is in good hands. Especially someone like you, who is an expert in old houses.”