Chapter 6 - Catherine’s Place at the Table
The following Sunday, Benjamin and Toby arrived with groceries, fresh flowers, and the framed photograph of Catherine.
Harold stared at the picture for a long time before placing it on the kitchen shelf.
“Your mother liked this one.”
It showed Catherine on the front porch, laughing into the wind, one hand holding her hat in place.
Toby asked if they could light the memorial candle now.
Harold said yes.
The three of them stood at the kitchen table while the tiny flame trembled in the late-morning light.
Harold touched the edge of the glass.
“Your grandmother never forgot a school fundraiser, a funeral meal, or somebody’s child needing book money.”
Toby listened like it was a storybook.
Benjamin listened like it was evidence.
After lunch, attorney Martha Cline arrived carrying a slim leather folder.
She greeted Harold warmly, Toby politely, and Benjamin with the careful professionalism of someone who knew a family conversation could turn difficult.
“I only need Harold’s signature on the updated property inventory,” she said.
Benjamin started to step outside.
Harold stopped him.
“Stay.”
Benjamin sat back down.
Martha spread several documents across the table.
One page listed the ranch acreage.
Another listed a pending option agreement involving a solar-energy company interested in leasing part of the west field.
A third page bore a heading that made Benjamin’s throat tighten:
Catherine Whitmore Education Trust
He looked up.
Harold said nothing.
Martha closed the folder before Benjamin could read more.
“The main trust draft is not finalized yet,” she said. “We’re still waiting on updated valuation reports.”
Toby, who was drawing cows on a scrap of paper, looked up.
“Is that my name?”
Harold smiled faintly.
“Not yet, boy.”
Martha left soon afterward.
Benjamin helped wash the lunch dishes in silence.
Finally he asked, “How long have you been planning that?”
Harold handed him a plate to dry.
“Long enough that your mother helped me start it.”
Catherine had been dead three years.
Yet somehow she was still in the paperwork.
May you like
Still in the decisions.
Still, Benjamin suspected, at the center of whatever his father had almost told him in Richmond.
