The Insurance Company Gave My Best Friend’s Widow 30 Days to Prove He Signed His $1 Million Policy

The office on Chester Avenue was a nail salon now.

My lawyer pulled every record she could. Floyd Ambrose, insurance agent, licensed since 1962. License surrendered in 2015. No forwarding address. No obituary, either, which was the only good news.

I spent a week calling every Ambrose in California.

Twenty days left.

I found a granddaughter on the ninth day, through a church newsletter in Fresno. She was cautious on the phone. Then I told her why I was calling, and she went quiet.

“Grandpa moved in with my aunt,” she said. “In Ely, Nevada. He’s eighty-eight.”

“Does he remember things?”

“Old things, yes. Better than me. New things, not so much.” She paused. “Mr. Beltrán, he has good days and bad days. You’d better hope you get a good one.”

Ely, Nevada, is seven hundred miles from Bakersfield. Most of it is empty.

I could have chartered a plane. I drove instead. I wanted the time to think.

I left before dawn with a thermos, a folder of Tony’s papers, and a photo Connie had given me of the two of us at sixteen, sitting on the tailgate of his father’s truck in the grape rows.

Somewhere past Tonopah, with nothing on either side of the highway but sagebrush and sky, I pulled over and cried for the first time since the funeral.

I hadn’t let myself in April. Someone had to hold up Connie. Someone had to carry the casket straight.

When I got back in the truck, I called her.

“I’m almost there,” I said.

“Nacho,” she said. “What if he doesn’t remember?”

“He’ll remember.”

I didn’t tell her what I was thinking.

Because if Floyd Ambrose didn’t remember, Tony’s boys were going to lose their house.