Chapter 3 - Gold and Paper
My fingers trembled as I loosened the black velvet drawstrings. I tipped the pouch over the wooden table, half-expecting to find glass buttons or worthless brass tokens.
Instead, a cascade of cold metal and heavy, folded paper spilled onto the table with a soft, dull clatter.
Gold.
Real, heavy, pre-1933 United States gold coins—Eagle twenty-dollar pieces, their raised Liberty faces gleaming beneath the harsh yellow kitchen light. There were dozens of them, stacked tightly in wax-lined paper rolls that had preserved their luster. Beside the coins were several thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills, bound with faded rubber bands that had dried and snapped with age.
I gasped, covering my mouth with both hands to suppress a sob.
These were the profits from the farmland. Fiona hadn't spent everything on her children; she had secretly converted her savings into gold and cash during the farm crises of the late eighties, distrusting banks after seeing her own father lose his farm during the Great Depression.
I quickly counted the paper bills and weighed the gold in my palm. The cash alone totaled over eighty thousand dollars. The twenty-dollar gold pieces—at least fifty of them—were worth easily double or triple that on the collector’s market.
It was a fortune. A life-changing, debt-erasing fortune saved by a woman who wore the same two faded floral dresses for twenty years and mended her own socks until there was more thread than original wool left in them.
Finally, I picked up the folded document sealed with the dark red wax.
I broke the seal gently. The paper was heavy parchment, legal letterhead from a small law firm in Columbus, dated seven years prior.
Last Will and Testament of Fiona Marie Vance.
My eyes scanned the elegant legal print:
"I, Fiona Marie Vance, being of sound mind and body, hereby revoke all prior wills. I leave my remaining personal effects, my real property, and all liquid assets contained within my possession to my daughter-in-law, Mabel Vance, as sole beneficiary. My biological children—Clara, Julian, Marcus, and David—have received their inheritances in advance through forty years of financial support, for which no accounting was ever requested. They shall receive nothing further from my estate."
Attached to the legal document was a hand-written note from the lawyer who had drafted it, along with a signed affidavit from a notary public who had visited our house seven years ago under the guise of an insurance adjuster.
I sank back against the stool, my mind spinning.
May you like
Fiona had planned this years ago. She had watched her children abandon her, one by one, while I carried her frail body back and forth to the bath. She had hidden this fortune inside the very pillow she rested her aching head upon every single night.
Suddenly, footsteps thudded down the stairs.
