Roadblock IV
Restored in October 2026 from a 2003 copy of the original PenBase page saved by the Wayback Machine; Pentrace’s own database copy had been cut short.
Laurel left the room and I turned to Anita who was gazing at me with a expression of concern. I’d been about to thank her for her timely intervention, but the look on her face stopped me in my tracks.
“Well, what is it?” I asked. “Do I have a dirt smudge on my nose? An ink splotch on my cheek?”
She shook her head, and her expression turned into a smirk. “No, I just wondered how long it would have taken you to say something unspeakably rude to Laurel if I hadn’t sent her off.”
I snorted. “Well, she needed to be shocked into silence. All that sentimentality! Imagine anyone seeing me as an angel!”
Anita said nothing.
“I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt,” I continued. “Perhaps she is not aware that James and Andrew haven’t spoken to me since five years after Lawrence died. That’s fifteen years.”
Anita shook her head. “More like sixteen years.”
I glared at her. “Pardon me, Anita, but I know when my own husband died. It was twenty years, seven months, and eighteen days ago. And my sons stopped speaking to me the day after I changed my will.”
“Well, you knew that would set them off,” she observed calmly. “You didn’t have to do it.”
“They had no interest in the house or the business. I adjusted the cash amounts of their legacies accordingly. It’s not as if I was attempting to impoverish them.”
“But they wanted all of it,” Anita replied.
“Indeed they did. That was the first inkling I got of how much they resented Phoebe.”
“Well, they don’t consider her to be, as James once informed me, ‘a blood relation’,” Anita said calmly.
“She’s their half-sister! It’s I who could claim that she’s not a blood relation, but that doesn’t matter to me.”
Anita smiled at me. “And how is Phoebe these days?”
She knew that my mood would lighten once she changed the subject to my former ward.
“She’s fine. Steven and she are on Maui for their honeymoon. But you know that. They phoned late yesterday afternoon and even sent their love to you. Steven is a good man. He loves Phoebe and will make her a good husband. I’m so glad she finally found him. She’d been so unlucky in love for so long. She deserves a break.”
Anita grinned at me fondly. “You are an ornery old coot, Marian, but a good woman. And so is Phoebe. You two are lucky to have each other.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yes, sometimes I think Phoebe was Lawrence’s greatest gift to me. I must say I was surprised when he finally took in Jenny’s child. Who’d ever have expected it of him after all the fuss he made trying to hide their relationship? My husband was a fool, Anita. A good businessman but a fool nonetheless. Did he think I’d have rejected my best friend when I found out that he and she had been lovers before he and I had even met? And then he had the audacity to claim that Phoebe was not his child. Good grief, she looks like him almost as much as she does Jenny!”
Anita reached out and patted my hand. She could see the sadness on my face. I was still grieving over a loss I’d suffered when Jenny had died almost thirty years earlier, and she knew it.
“He was afraid, Marian. He valued you so much.”
“No, it was his good name, his status as a pillar of the community that he valued, Anita. I tried to force him to acknowledge Phoebe as his child, you know, even while Jenny was alive. He wouldn’t do it. Said he had the boys to think about.” I shook my head. “Yet he loved Jenny very much in his own convoluted way. We both did. And Phoebe is so much like her.”
“Jenny and you went back a long way, Marian,” Anita said. “I don’t think Lawrence ever appreciated the depth of the bond between you. He’d have saved himself a lot of grief if he had.”
I laughed sharply. “Well, you knew Lawrence. He’d always remind me that Jenny and I weren’t sisters.” I snorted. “I suppose that’s where James and Andrew got their obsession with blood relationships.”
Anita sighed. “Well, I don’t think the issue is really whether or not Phoebe is a blood relation to James and Andrew. I’d be willing to bet that they’re jealous of your preference for her.”
“Hogwash!” I replied. “I was always fair to all of them, treated them equally. They just want to inherit everything. And the sooner the better. They’re just greedy, that’s all. It’s because Lawrence sent them off to boarding school when they were so young. He claimed it would turn them into real men, but it just turned them in to acquisitive, competitive, pathetic excuses for human beings. And to think that after I fought for them, they ended up preferring their father who didn’t even want to have them around! Phoebe was the only one who wanted to stay close to me, blood relation or not. The rift is James’ and Andrew’s fault, not mine.”
Anita shook her head, but we didn’t get a chance to let the conversation escalate into a full-blown argument because Laurel returned lugging a very large pen chest.
“This is heavy,” she panted. “I didn’t realize Handsome had so many pens.” She deposited the chest on the coffee table.
“If it’s full,” Anita interjected, “you have seventy-two pens in there.”
“How do you know?” I challenged, still feeling argumentative.
“I’m familiar with that kind of chest,” Anita replied without paying any mind to my irritability.
“Oh, it’s full,” Laurel said, nodding her head. “Take a look!”
Anita opened the chest and pulled out a flat tray. “Montblanc L.E.s,” she said softly, smirking slightly. “Well, what else would one expect from Dennison?”
Laurel and I exchanged puzzled glances, but Anita didn’t seem to notice.
“I believe they’re all mint,” she continued. “They don’t look as if they’ve even been dipped. He has doubles and triples of some of them. Do you have the boxes for them?” She turned her head and looked at Laurel. “With boxes they’d be worth a good sum. Without, still a decent amount, but not as much.”
Laurel looked even more confused. “Boxes?” she whispered with a shrug. “I don’t know anything about boxes. Maybe they’re in the attic or the cellar. Maybe Handsome hid them in that big closet in his study.” She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know.”
“Well, you might want to look for them,” Anita replied. “If you want to sell the pens, having the boxes would increase their value.”
Laurel nodded. “You think I should sell the pens?”
Anita smiled faintly. Some of them are hard to come by and will bring in a nice sum. None of them are pens I collect. All modern, no vintage. Of course, if you like any of them well enough to keep…” She shrugged and fell silent for a moment. “Ah well, he could have collected uglier pens. They’re pretty, I’ll grant that. And some of them, so I’ve been told, write well enough.”
Anita is definitely a vintage pen snob, and I wanted to say so, but I held my tongue, curious about what would happen next. I didn’t have long to wait. Laurel shrugged back and picked up the tray. “Why don’t I put this on the sideboard while you get the next one out?” she suggested.
The next tray interested Anita almost as little as the previous one had. “More mint L.E.s,” she grumbled. “ Not Montblanc this time though. More of a mixed bag.”
Laurel cleared her throat. “I thought you liked fountain pens,” she said hesitantly. “These seem to offend you somehow. Or am I wrong?”
“No,” Anita replied, fingering a beautiful blue pen that she said was a Delta, “they don’t offend me. This one is quite pretty, isn’t it?” She held the pen up. “It’s just that limited edition fountain pens are produced as collectors’ items, not as writing implements. They are priced accordingly. “Not,” she admitted, putting the pen back in the tray, “that some of them don’t write very well.”
“So what’s the problem?” Laurel asked.
“It’s a personal bias. Though many are lovely objects and some are excellent tools, I am not delighted to see row upon row of fountain pens that no one is likely to use.”
“So other people don’t use them either?” Laurel asked. “It’s not just Handsome?”
Anita chuckled. “These pens are primarily status symbols. Owning one is generally the aim, not using it. To me, an unused fountain pen is a bit like an unlived life.” She looked up at Laurel. “But you don’t need to hear my thoughts on that. What else do we have?”
Laurel, however, was not to be distracted. “Why do you call them mint? They’re not green.”
Anita chuckled. “Mint means never used.” She shook her head. “Of course, some people argue about the exact meaning of mint, but never used is good enough for me.” She grinned at us. “I don’t collect mint pens.”
Laurel looked pleased, though I’m not sure if the look was more one of relief at finally understanding Anita’s reaction. “Then all of Handsome’s pens are mint,” she said. “I don’t think he ever wrote with a fountain pen. He carries a roller to work, one with a white star on the cap.”
I nodded knowingly. “That’s the logo for Montblanc, isn't it?” I interjected.
Anita nodded. “Yes, Marian, you are correct. I must say, it does not surprise me in the least to learn that Dennison writes with a Montblanc roller. That seems utterly appropriate.”
“Oh, he doesn’t actually write with it. At least I’ve never seen him write with it. He just takes it to work in his pocket,” Laurel explained. “He’s always checking to make sure the star shows.”
Anita laughed. “Better still.”
“Handsome really doesn’t write very much. He uses his computer for everything that has to do with his work,” Laurel added. “Shall I put that tray on the sideboard as well?”
Anita hesitated. “I imagine that Marian is getting a bit bored,” she said, with a sidelong glance at me. “Perhaps you can show her your garden, Laurel, while I finish up in here.”
“I’d much rather hear that story I was promised,” I interjected quickly.
Anita blushed. “Laurel, I told Marian, who finally caved in and bought herself a fountain pen to use because of her arthritis, that she was not the only one to come to fountain pens through adversity. So, if you don’t mind, please tell her what happened to your marriage. And while you are enlightening her, I’ll finish the inventory of these pens.”
“These aren’t all of them,” Laurel said. “There is another chest upstairs, smaller but full of pens that are…well, Handsome called them more artistic, but I always found them hideous, almost frightening to look at.”
Anita chuckled. “Take Marian out into the garden and I’ll go through these. Then I’ll summon you back to show me the others.”
Laurel nodded and obediently walked through the door into the kitchen. “This way, Mrs. Euler,” she said softly. And I obediently followed.