My Cousin Brought A Will Into The Cold Film Room

Nadim laid the will on my clean work mat, right where the film needed to go.

"Your aunt left me everything," he said. "Including this damp little kingdom."

The room wasn't damp. I checked its meter twice a day. We were in a brick building off Westminster Street in Providence, above a closed dress shop. My aunt Salma had made small films there for thirty years.

I was Maya Azzi, twenty-eight, a Lebanese American woman working as a film conservator on a six-month contract at a local lab. I was short, with olive skin, thick dark curls tied at my neck, and a pale scar through my left eyebrow.

That morning, I had been measuring my breath while I lifted a brittle reel. In for four. Out for four. A hard breath or a quick hand could snap the edge at a bad splice.

My cousin watched as if I were playing with ribbon.

Nadim was a thirty-seven-year-old Lebanese American man with slick black hair, a close beard, and a gold watch that slid over his narrow wrist.

He sold things for people who didn't want to answer questions. Auction broker was the name on his card.

"Move the paper," I said.

"Read it first."

I set the reel down. On its clear leader, Aunt Salma had drawn four small squares in blue pencil. She always left four blank frames before a repair.

"Give the next person room to see what you did," she'd told me.

I moved the will myself.

It was a copy, stapled crookedly. The date was November 18, after the illness that had taken her speech for whole days. She had died in January. Now, three weeks later, Nadim had a document that gave him her films, her cash, and the right to clear this room.

One line named me.

I leave nothing to my niece, Maya Azzi, whose conduct disappointed me.

"What conduct?"

"The negatives," he said. "You upset her when you blocked that sale."

In August, he'd offered $40,000 for her original negatives. He wouldn't name the client. Aunt Salma had asked my advice. I'd told her the prints could be sold, but the originals were her life's work.

She had said, "Then we keep my life."

"She agreed with me," I told him.

"People change their minds."

"Especially after they can't speak for themselves?"

He smiled with his mouth closed.

"I promised her I'd preserve access," he said.

"You promised that buyer ownership."

"A market adjustment."

That was what he called every broken promise. When he'd sold our grandfather's radio after offering it to my mother, that had been a market adjustment too.

He tapped the copied page.

"I've filed it. You'll get notice. Don't make this expensive."

"Who's handling the estate?"

"I don't need her old lawyer."

That answer caught me. Aunt Salma had kept a yellow card for Beatrice Mott beside the landline. When I checked the desk, the card was gone.

"What happened to the inventory binder?" I asked.

"It's being valued."

The binder listed 189 cans, their footage, their rights, and every place they'd traveled. Without it, a buyer could call an original a spare.

Nadim glanced at my work apron.

"Stay with the little repairs, Maya. Lawyers charge more than you make."

My lab contract paid $24 an hour. I had $1,860 in savings and a car that needed brakes. He knew all three facts because I'd once trusted him.

He didn't know which records Aunt Salma had asked me to keep.

She had paid me $120 each month to log loans and returns. Every reel that left had a signed custody slip. I'd mailed her a copy and kept another in a separate box at home.

I didn't own this room. But I held its history of movement, down to the hour.

"I need the originals of your papers," I said.

"You'll see what the court needs you to see."

He left with the yellow key from her ring. I wrote the time on a fresh sheet: 9:42 a.m. Then I noted exactly what he'd taken.

I couldn't afford a shouting match. I could afford a pencil.

Before I closed the reel, I checked its can. Aunt Salma had called this film The Last Shift. It held women leaving a dye works along the Woonasquatucket River, carrying their shoes through floodwater.

Under its false cardboard floor, something scratched against the metal.

I lifted the card with a smooth film spatula. A small envelope lay beneath it, away from the reel.

On the front, she'd written my name and four blue squares.

Inside was a custody receipt, numbered 044, for an original signed codicil dated May 9.

Beatrice Mott's office had accepted it five months before the illness began.

At the bottom, in my aunt's steady hand, were six words: Ask Bea What She Is Holding.