The woman who stepped into the parlor behind Judge Harriet Pinckney was Marguerite Okafor, general counsel of the New York jewelry company that had bought my brooch designs, and she carried a slim black briefcase and the quiet, careful smile of a woman who has read a great deal of fine print. Caroline sat on the sofa with her book club in a half circle around her, eleven ladies and a plate of lemon squares. Edward stood by the fireplace in his golf shirt. I sat in my armchair, in the pearls Thomas gave me in 1968, with my hands folded.
“Good afternoon,” said Ms. Okafor. “I apologize for the interruption. Mrs. Abernathy asked me to come, and I had a few matters to settle with the family. Ladies, I will be brief.” She opened the briefcase and laid out three documents on the coffee table, between the lemon squares and the teapot. “First, a conservatorship petition filed in Charleston County in August, on the grounds of dementia. Second, a letter from a Dr. Whitaker Lamar of Mount Pleasant, stating that Mrs. Abernathy engages in repetitive behaviors. Third, two telephone calls placed to my office by Mrs. Caroline Abernathy.”
Caroline set down her teacup. Ms. Okafor went on, pleasantly. Dr. Lamar, it turned out, was a second cousin of Caroline. He had never examined me in his life. He had written his letter after looking at a photograph on a telephone. The two calls were recorded, as all calls to the company legal department are. In the first, Caroline identified herself as my conservator, which she was not, and asked for the payments to be redirected. In the second, she asked what would happen to the designs if I were declared incompetent. The ladies of the book club sat very still.
A brooch design sold to a New York company gave one widow the afternoon to bring her son back to the truth in Charleston.
I gave my terms from my armchair, in the voice I once used on the board of the garden club. “Caroline, Edward, you will withdraw the petition tomorrow morning, in writing, to the court. Harriet will deliver it herself. You will move out of this house within thirty days, to the cottage on Tradd Street, which I will lease to you at a fair rent. And you will apologize to the ladies of this club, because they have known me since 1968, and you have called me a fool in front of them. That is all, and I will hear no argument from either of you.”
Edward put his hand over his eyes. “Mother,” he said. “I knew. I knew what she was doing and I did not stop her. Caroline said that you were getting confused, and that we would be doing you a kindness. I wanted so badly to believe her that I stopped looking at you. I looked at the paperwork instead.” His voice cracked. “You raised me to do better. I am so sorry.” I looked at my only child, fifty seven years old and crying in my parlor, and I felt a grief I could not name. I did not need to say anything. He knew.
Caroline sprang to her feet, grabbed the letter of Dr. Lamar and her purse, and made for the kitchen door with her chin up, saying that this was a conspiracy. She had gone three steps when Mrs. Dorothea Gadsden, eighty seven years old and the oldest member of the club, rose from the sofa with the casserole dish of lemon squares in both hands and planted herself in the doorway. “Caroline,” said Mrs. Gadsden, in the voice of a woman who has outlived three husbands, “I have a very heavy dish and a very good aim. Sit down.” Caroline sat.
Judge Pinckney folded her gloved hands. She said that if the petition were dropped, and an apology offered, and a fair arrangement made, there would be no need to involve the district attorney. She said that she would be watching. Caroline nodded, ashen, her mouth a thin line. Then, to my astonishment, she began to cry. She said her own mother had been put in a home against her will, and she had sworn it would never happen to her. She had become what she feared, she said, without ever noticing.
The money consequences were small. The petition was withdrawn that week, and Dr. Lamar was reported to the state medical board. The company in New York wired the full four million, six hundred thousand dollars into an account in my name alone, with a clause that no one but me could change the payment details. Caroline and Edward moved to Tradd Street, paid a fair rent, and started marriage counseling. They came to Sunday dinner every week. Nobody mentioned the book club. Mrs. Gadsden brought lemon squares anyway, and she watched Caroline carefully.
In the name of Thomas, who passed in 2020, I started the Thomas Abernathy Fund. It pays for tools, supplies and apprenticeships for young jewelers and metalsmiths in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties. In the first year we sponsored nineteen apprentices. A girl of eighteen from North Charleston, who had been making earrings out of fishing wire, set her first stone in a silver brooch. She pinned it on my collar at a ceremony at the Dock Street Theatre. I wore it home, and I have not taken it off.
On the second Tuesday of the next month, the book club met in my parlor again. Caroline made the tea, and Edward carried in the chairs. When the ladies were seated, I rose and unpinned a brooch from my lapel. It was a small gold magnolia, the first design I ever drew, in 1963. I pinned it on the collar of my daughter in law, and I told her it was hers to wear, as long as she remembered who wore it first. She touched it with a trembling finger. The ladies applauded, softly, and passed the plate.
