Part 3 — Lorettas Savings Bonds
Avery put the long white envelope in my hands, and then she stood very straight, the way her grandmother used to when she had something hard to say. Bernice set the shoebox on the porch rail. Curtis said, Avery, please, and my granddaughter turned and looked at her father for the first time that day.
Inside the envelope was a letter in Averys handwriting. She wrote that her father had told her I was getting forgetful, that I should not be handed any more of her graduation plans, and that the college money was something he and her mother had set up themselves. She had believed him until Aunt Bernice called her on the morning of the ceremony.
The shoebox was tied with Lorettas kitchen string. In it were thirty-two paper savings bonds, bought one at a time over twenty years from her church-bazaar money, each one issued in Averys name. Loretta had put Bernice in charge of them. She wanted them to belong to the girl on the day she turned eighteen, no earlier and no later.
Bernice explained the rest, shaking. Four years ago, Curtis had come to her saying the bonds could be cashed early and put into a college plan, and she had mailed him the first half. He cashed them and spent the money on the restaurant he was starting. The college plan I had been paying into was the only thing that ever went to Avery.
Loretta spent twenty years saving a little at a time so that her granddaughter would never have to ask for anything.
The law in Georgia is plain about this. Savings bonds issued in a minors name belong to the minor, and an adult who redeems them for his own use owes the money back. Mae Etta at the credit union helped me find a lawyer by Monday. The Treasury confirmed the redemption record, and Curtis did not try to deny it.
He sat on my sofa that Wednesday with his hands over his face. He said he had been drowning, and each lie had made the next one easier. He agreed to a restitution agreement in front of a judge, with payments going straight to Averys college account, and a court-appointed trustee holding anything left from the bonds.
Renee cried through the whole hearing and then stood outside the courthouse and apologized to me in front of her daughter. I told her I understood that she had been afraid. I also told her that from now on, the college would be paid directly by me and by the trustee, with the receipts in Averys name, and nobody would carry an envelope.
Avery wore her cap and robe again the following Saturday for a second picture on my porch. She slipped Lorettas tie clip into my jacket pocket and straightened my collar. She said the party had been fine, but the best part was finding out her granddaddy had been standing behind her the whole time.
I still keep Lorettas handwriting on the front of the brown file in the rolltop desk. I crossed out one name and wrote another beneath it, in my own shaky hand. It says, AVERY, paid in full, with love from the two of us.
