Joanna nodded without comment. Little girl?
Hardly, but compared to Harold’s eighty-odd years, she must seem improbably young for that kind of responsibility.
“I reckon your daddy would be real proud of you if he could see you today,” Harold continued.
“I voted for you, by the way. Stopped off on my way into town.”
Joanna felt a flush creep up her neck. “Thank you, Mr. Patterson. I appreciate that. But tell me, what can I do for you today?”
“I’m used to dealing with Milo,” Harold Patterson hedged. “And with Milo’s father before that…”
“It’s all right, Mr. Patterson. If you don’t want me to take care of whatever it is, that’ll be fine.
The problem is, I have no idea how long Milo will be gone. It could be after lunch before he comes back. I do have access to all of the files, and Harold leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice. “It’s personal, ma’am,” he whispered so Lisa couldn’t hear. “Personal and confidential.”
Joanna took the hint, got up, and firmly closed the connecting door between her office and Lisa’s.
“There,” she said, sitting back down. “Is that better?”
Harold nodded. “What do I have to do to change the beneficiaries on my policies?” he asked. “Do I have to bring the policies into the office, or what? I think they’re over at the bank.”
“Oh, no. If that’s all you want, I can do it in a minute. All you have to do is fill out a change-of beneficiary form.”
“Just one form for all the policies?”
“No. You use a separate form for each one, but I will need the policy numbers.”
“Damn. I don’t have them along.”
Joanna smiled. “No problem, Mr. Patterson.
Give me your date of birth.”
“November the twelfth, 1910.”
Joanna switched on her desktop computer and booted it up. Once she had entered Harold Patterson’s name and birth date into the database, the screen showed her a listing of his set of several policies. Harold Patterson had come into the world when automobiles were still a rarity. He watched the computer operation with some interest.
‘You have five policies in all with us, Mr. Patterson,” Joanna said a moment later. “Would you care to have a printout on each one?”
“You can do that?”
‘Certainly.”
Joanna typed in a series of commands, and moments later the dot-matrix printer behind her whined out a stream of printed paper. Tearing off the tractor-feed holes and separating the printouts into individual sheets, she handed them over to Harold. He sat there for some time, squinting at each one in turn.
‘Is everything in order?” Joanna asked.
He looked up at her as if startled at the sound of her voice. “Oh, yes. They seem to be fine.”
Joanna reached into her bottom drawer, thumbed through a series of files, and came up with a fistful of change-of-beneficiary forms. “You don’t have to complete them here, but they do have to be properly witnessed at the time of signing. Did you want to change the beneficiary designation on all of the policies?”
Harold first nodded, then shook his head. “Yes.
Well, no. I’m not sure.” Finally, he tossed the stack of papers back onto Joanna’s desk.
“How can I tell?” he demanded in disgust.
“Eyes are so damn bad, I can’t hardly read the damn things.”
Joanna picked them up and glanced through them. “Your daughter Ivy is the sole beneficiary on all of them,” she explained. “If she’s not then living, the proceeds are to be divided equally between your nephew, Burton Kimball, and your daughter Holly. If you’d like to make a change in those arrangements, Mr. Patterson, I’d be happy to complete the forms for you.”
To Joanna’s surprise, Harold Patterson’s eyes filled with a sudden pool of tears that threatened to overflow his eyes despite the old man’s valiant attempt to blink them back.
“Always thought of myself as sort of a care taker,” he mumbled hoarsely. “Thought I’d take care of what my pa gave me and pass it along to my children and to their children’s children. As it turns out, my girls are the end of the line. Instead of valuing the Rocking P and what I’ve worked for all my life, they’re fighting over it.”
He shook his head sadly. “Reminds me of a pair of dogs I had once, years ago, an older one and a pup. The old dog had this blanket, an old, wore out horse blanket, that he slept on out in the barn.
The pup took a liking to that blanket and tried to make off with it. There was plenty of blanket to go around. They could have both used it, but they each pulled and tugged on it until there was nothing left but pieces. Turned out neither one of them had the good of it.”
Harold paused and looked at Joanna. “You see what I mean, don’t you?”
Joanna nodded. “I think so, yes. Your daughters?”
He nodded wearily. “And the Rocking P is the blanket. Or maybe I am. You want your children to grow up to
