I honestly thought the years were finally catching up to her. “Nonna,” I whispered, leaning in close, “I’ve never seen a dollar of any trust.”
She didn’t gasp. She didn’t argue. briefly, she just stared at me. Then, with agonizing gentleness, she handed Marigold back into my arms.
She placed it squarely beside her bread plate, folded her manicured hands upon the clasp, and said, “Give me your mother’s phone number.”
My grandmother had possessed my mother’s cell phone number for twenty-eight years. She had it memorized. She wasn’t asking for the digits; she was issuing a terrifying warning that she was about to weaponize them.
I’d no idea that fourteen years prior, Nonna had been sitting rigid in a mahogany-paneled law office when a staggering sum of money was spoken aloud.
My name is Jana Kersey. I am twenty-six years old, and I navigate the grueling existence of a pharmacy cashier in Glen Allen, a sprawling suburb just north of Richmond, Virginia.
I inhabit a cramped, drafty one-bedroom apartment off Staples Mill Road with my daughter, Marigold, who arrived on Groundhog Day and possesses militant opinions about the temperature of her milk. I rarely waste breath discussing him. He is a ghost who left nothing behind.
My own father, Declan Kersey, was a ghost of a different caliber. He was a commercial HVAC technician, a blue-collar magician who could resurrect any humming, metallic beast in your basement. He chronically kept butterscotch discs in the breast pocket of his uniform, distributing them to toddlers at every residential job site. He referred to me exclusively as “Bug,” right up until the grim afternoon of March 19th, 2012.
He was forty years old. I was twelve.
My memories of the funeral are a blur of damp tissues and the overwhelming scent of lilies. I vividly recall my mother, Renata, sobbing elegantly in a black sheath dress she had borrowed from her sister. I was swallowed by a tufted leather wingback chair, blissfully eating butterscotch candies from a crystal dish on the attorney’s desk, while the solemn adults murmured about life insurance policies.
